Search results for " TAS"
showing 10 items of 721 documents
The role of letter features in visual-word recognition: Evidence from a delayed segment technique.
2016
Available online 9 June 2016 Do all visual features in aword's constituent letters have the same importance during lexical access? Herewe examined whether some components of a word's letters (midsegments, junctions, terminals) are more important than others. To that end,we conducted two lexical decision experiments using a delayed segment techniquewith lowercase stimuli. In this technique a partial previewappears for 50ms and is immediately followed by the target item. In Experiment 1, the partial preview was composed of terminals+junctions,midsegments+junctions, or midsegments + terminals — a whole preview condition was used as a control. Results only revealed an advantage of the whole pre…
Is VIRTU4L larger than VIR7UAL? Automatic processing of number quantity and lexical representations in leet words.
2015
Recent research has shown that leet words (i.e., words in which some of the letters are replaced by visually similar digits; e.g., VIRTU4L) can be processed as their base words without much cost. However, it remains unclear whether the digits inserted in leet words are simply processed as letters or whether they are simultaneously processed as numbers (i.e., in terms of access to their quantity representation). To address this question, we conducted two experiments that examined the size congruity effect (i.e., when comparisons of the physical size of numbers are affected by their numerical magnitudes) in a physical-size judgment task. Participants were presented with pairs of leet words th…
The role of attentional biases to appetitive stimuli in childhood overweight
2018
Overweight during childhood constitutes a high-risk factor for adult obesity. An abnormal attention to food stimuli (i.e., a bias) has been suggested as an underlying mechanism to the onset and/or maintenance of obesity. Previous literature supports the existence of a biased attention toward food stimuli in adults with obesity. However, it is unknown whether this attentional bias occurs in high-risk children for adult obesity. We aimed to examine attentional biases to food at different stages of attention processing in overweight children. A dot-probe task was applied to 25 children with overweight and 25 healthy-weight children (8-12 years old). Attentional preference to or avoidance of pl…
Preschool executive control on the Shape School task: Measurement considerations and utility.
2011
Executive functions (EF) necessary for purposeful goal-directed activities undergo rapid change and development during the preschool years. However, of the few psychometrically valid measures of EF suitable for use with preschoolers, information on task sensitivity and predictive validity is scant. The neurodevelopmental correlates of early executive difficulties are also largely unknown. In this study, the discriminant and predictive validity of the recently developed Shape School task (Espy, Bull, Martin, & Stroup, 2006) was examined with data from a regional sample of 209 preschool children at age 4 years. A 2-tiered measurement approach was used, with task completion examined in additio…
Contextual diversity is a main determinant of word identification times in young readers.
2013
Recent research with college-aged skilled readers by Adelman and colleagues revealed that contextual diversity (i.e., the number of contexts in which a word appears) is a more critical determinant of visual word recognition than mere repeated exposure (i.e., word frequency) (Psychological Science, 2006, Vol. 17, pp. 814-823). Given that contextual diversity has been claimed to be a relevant factor to word acquisition in developing readers, the effects of contextual diversity should also be a main determinant of word identification times in developing readers. A lexical decision experiment was conducted to examine the effects of contextual diversity and word frequency in young readers (child…
Does visual letter similarity modulate masked form priming in young readers of Arabic?
2018
Available online 19 January 2018 Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.004. Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.004. We carried out a masked priming lexical decision experiment to study whether visual letter similarity plays a role during the initial phases of word processing in young readers of Arabic (fifth graders). Arabic is ideally suited to test these effects because most Arabic letters share their basic shape with at least one other letter and differ only in the number/position of diacritical points (e.g.…
Behavioral deficits induced by lead exposure are accompanied by serotonergic and cholinergic alterations in the prefrontal cortex
2013
The effects of long-term lead (Pb) exposure producing a blood Pb concentration of lower than 20 μg/dL, i.e. below that associated with overt neurological deficits in occupationally exposed individuals, was studied in adult rats. In order to assess gender differences, we performed parallel behavioral experiments in male and female rats. Exposure to Pb acetate (50 ppm in drinking water) for 6 months induced motor and cognitive alterations, however these effects were gender- and task-dependent. Chronic lead exposure impaired spatial learning assessed in the Morris water maze test (MWM) in both genders, whereas it only induced hyperactivity in the open field and impaired motor coordination in t…
Food quality and nutraceutical value of nine cultivars of mango (Mangifera indica L.) fruits grown in Mediterranean subtropical environment
2019
Mango (Mangifera indica L.) quality is strongly influenced by genotype but individuating the most appropriate harvesting time is essential to obtain high quality fruits. In this trial we studied the influences of the ripening stage at harvest (mature-ripe or green-ripe) on quality of ready to eat mango fruits from nine cultivars (Carrie, Keitt, Glenn, Manzanillo, Maya, Rosa, Osteen, Tommy Atkins and Kensington Pride) grown in the Mediterranean subtropical climate through physicochemical, nutraceutical, and sensory analysis. Our results show a large variability among the different observed genotypes and in dependence of the ripening stage at harvest. With the exception of Rosa, mature-ripe f…
Computer game as a tool for training the identification of phonemic length.
2013
Computer-assisted training of Finnish phonemic length was conducted with 7-year-old Russian-speaking second-language learners of Finnish. Phonemic length plays a different role in these two languages. The training included game activities with two- and three-syllable word and pseudo-word minimal pairs with prototypical vowel durations. The lowest accuracy scores were recorded for two-syllable words. Accuracy scores were higher for the minimal pairs with larger rather than smaller differences in duration. Accuracy scores were lower for long duration than for short duration. The ability to identify quantity degree was generalized to stimuli used in the identification test in two of the childr…
Masked Translation Priming Effects With Highly Proficient Simultaneous Bilinguals
2010
One essential issue for models of bilingual memory organization is to what degree the representation from one of the languages is shared with the other language. In this study, we examine whether there is a symmetrical translation priming effect with highly proficient, simultaneous bilinguals. We conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment with cognate and noncognate translation equivalents. Results showed a significant masked translation priming effect for both cognates and noncognates, with a greater priming effect for cognates. Furthermore, the magnitude of the translation priming was similar in the two directions. Thus, highly fluent bilinguals do develop symmetrical between…