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- P-ISSN1226-9654
- E-ISSN2733-466X
- KCI
ISSN : 1226-9654
Vol.19 No.4
Abstract
This paper reported an eye-tracking experiment designed to probe how the reference ambiguities of Korean reflexive expressions are resolved during on-line processing. In Korean the reflexives (e.g., 'caki' 'casin') could refer both antecedent NPs in the sentences. We have compared two forms of the reflexive pronouns and the argument information of verbs that could make referential relations unambiguous and measured four indices of eye movements such as the first pass reading times, the re-reading times, the total reading time, and the regression frequency. First, the results of the experiment showed that participants have read ‘caki’ faster than ‘casin’ in the ambiguous region of sentences and in the disambiguation verb. Second, the ‘caki’ in the sentences with the reflexive that refer to main-clause subject were read faster than the sentences with the reflexive that refer to embedded-clause subject in the disambiguation region(i.e., verb). However, the ‘casin’ did not show any differences between the conditions. It was discussed that two different Korean reflexives might have different linguistic properties and their referential resolution processes might be determined by different principles.
Abstract
This study examined how aging changes the way of using context informations in reading, by comparing the semantic priming effects of young and older adults. Young and older adults participated in the lexical decision task of Hangul words. Prime words, semantically related or unrelated to target words, were selected to measure the priming effects. The duration of prime words(SOA) was manipulated as 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, and 800 ms to identify the time course of priming effects in two age groups. The lexical decision latency was longer for the olds than younger adults. The time when priming has begun was also late by ages. However, the maximum size of the semantic priming effects was not different between the two age groups. For the shorter SOA conditions, the elderly showed smaller priming effects than the young adults. But there are no age-related differences in the size of the priming effects when the available time is sufficient as much as the longer SOA conditions. Our results suggest that although the speed of using informations about the semantic relations is delayed in older adults, the ability to apply informations is kept efficient in the elderly as well as the young adults.
Abstract
This study was conducted to find how to process an ambiguous sentence related with garden-path sentence(GPS) and early closure sentence(ECS), and to reveal the difference of contribution between their syntactic and semantic informations using ERPs. Task to be required is to read silently and respond to the presented English phrase by self-paced reading method. Analyses on behavioral response time show the significant delayed response to the controlled GPS and ECS condition. The current ERP results showed that embedded GPS sentences elicited more enhanced P600 but a slight difference of N400 while ECS sentences were more sensitive to N400 than small difference of P600. These results signify that on-line processing of ambiguity-related embedded sentence can be diverged based on the burden of interpretation of the given ambiguous word. Differential ERPs components in each type of experimental sentences suggest that the difficulty of sentential reanalysis as reflected on P600, and the need of the shift on thematic role indexed as N400 respectively were differently involved in processing English ambiguous-embedded sentences.
Abstract
This research was conducted to investigate morphological representation and processing of words printed in Hangul. Previous studies in Korean language have produced different results from other languages―inhibitory orthographic priming effects but no significant morphological ones. To test our hypothesis that Korean morphological processing is robust but its effects are blocked by orthographic processing, we manipulated spatial positions of shared constituents in primes and targets. In Experiment 1 using the immediate repetition priming technique with bisyllabic Sino-Korean words, morphological and orthographic priming effects were found to be modulated by spatial position of shared constituents. At the different constituent positions morphological priming effects were facilitatory but orthographic ones were null; at the same constituent positions morphological priming effects were null but orthographic ones were inhibitory. Experiment 2 also confirmed the results of Experiment 1 with the bisyllabic stimuli whose onsets change due to onset restriction. Findings are discussed in terms of how morphological and orthographic information interacts in reading Sino-Korean words.
Abstract
Blind spot is the area where optic nerves exit out of the retina. Since there is no photoreceptor in the blind spot, no visual input is present in this portion of the retina. Despite the lack of visual input, we do not realize the presence of the blind spot due to the filling-in mechanism of the human visual system. The visual system fills in the blind spot using surrounding information. We investigated the relationship between characteristics of the surrounding information and the aspect of the filling-in process of the blind spot. We varied stimuli characteristics such as contrast and the relative distance from the fovea. Participants' task was to report the smallest surrounding stimulus which could fill in the blind spot. Surrounding stimuli with higher contrast and relatively closer distance from the fovea filled in the blind spot with relatively smaller size of the stimuli. These results suggest that the signal strength of the surrounding information is an important factor in filling-in of the blind spot.
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is necessary for the contextual modulation of fear memory. This study investigated whether the prelimbic (PL) subregion of mPFC has influence on the regulation of fear response to the ambiguous CS using contextual information. To verify the hypothetical role of PL, we adopted a context-dependent discriminatory fear conditioning where context dictates CS-US contingency. Rats received 3 pairings of the CS (30-sec, 4-kHz, 75-dB tone) and the US (0.5-sec, 0.5-mA footshock) in context A followed after 1 hour by 10 CS-only trials in context B for 4 days. In the last training session, all rats showed significantly more freezing in context A than in context B. Twenty-four hours after the last training session, PL was lesioned in half of the rats. After eleven days of recovery, we tested the effects of electrolytic lesion of PL on context-dependent discriminatory fear conditioning. PL-lesioned animals showed similar responding to the CS in context A and B, whereas sham-lesioned rats show significantly different responding. This result indicates that the lesion of PL disturbed discriminatory responses to the ambiguous CS when contextual information should be used to resolve the ambiguity of the CS. When all animals were subjected to subsequent training sessions (retraining sessions) for two additional days, PL-lesioned rats acquired context-dependent discriminatory fear memory during the retraining sessions. However, when the rats were tested on the next day, PL-lesioned animals did not show the differential responding to the CS in contextual A and B. This result indicates that PL is necessary for retrieving the learned discriminatory fear memory in the appropriate context. Taken together, these findings suggest that PL might be involved in fear expression under the conditions where the fear responses must be regulated by contexts.
Abstract
The present study investigated how attentional selection and monetary incentives influence social and emotional judgment on unfamiliar faces and scenes. Attentional selection was modulated with a Go/No-Go task. A transparent color cue was superimposed on the face or scene stimuli. The participants responded when the Go cue appeared and inhibited their responses when the No-Go cue appeared. In the following evaluation task, the participants evaluated the trustworthiness of faces and the beauty of scenes. When monetary incentives were absent, no evaluation bias was observed on the Go trials. Only on the No-Go trials, the participants evaluated the uncued face more trustworthy than the cued one. When monetary incentives were given, however, evaluation bias was observed on both the Go and No-Go trials. On the Go trials, the uncued faces were evaluated less trustworthy and the uncued scenes were evaluated less beautiful. In addition, the participants evaluated the uncued face more trustworthy on the No-Go trials. An additional experiment confirmed that these results were due to attentional enhancement by monetary incentives. These results suggest that evaluation of stimuli can be biased by attention and that monetary incentives can strengthen attentional effects on social and emotional judgment.
Abstract
The present study investigated how attentional selection and monetary incentives influence social and emotional judgment on unfamiliar faces and scenes. Attentional selection was modulated with a Go/No-Go task. A transparent color cue was superimposed on the face or scene stimuli. The participants responded when the Go cue appeared and inhibited their responses when the No-Go cue appeared. In the following evaluation task, the participants evaluated the trustworthiness of faces and the beauty of scenes. When monetary incentives were absent, no evaluation bias was observed on the Go trials. Only on the No-Go trials, the participants evaluated the uncued face more trustworthy than the cued one. When monetary incentives were given, however, evaluation bias was observed on both the Go and No-Go trials. On the Go trials, the uncued faces were evaluated less trustworthy and the uncued scenes were evaluated less beautiful. In addition, the participants evaluated the uncued face more trustworthy on the No-Go trials. An additional experiment confirmed that these results were due to attentional enhancement by monetary incentives. These results suggest that evaluation of stimuli can be biased by attention and that monetary incentives can strengthen attentional effects on social and emotional judgment.
Abstract
The current research examined what type of discourse information Korean adults exploit when understanding sentences with null subjects. Adults read or heard short stories which consisted of 3 context sentences and one target sentence. The target sentence's subject was omitted. The target sentence either continued the subject of the preceding context or shifted subjects. The subject of the preceding context sentence was first or second mentioned within the sentence. The sentences of each stimulus story was presented one at a time either visually on a computer screen or auditorially over headphones, and subjects pressed a key as soon as they understood each sentence. The button-press reaction times was an index of comprehension difficulty. The results showed that Korean-speaking adults was quicker to understand null pronoun subject sentences when the subject was continued than when it was shifted from the prior context sentence. This pattern was found regardless of the position of the subject of the preceding context sentence. The first-mention advantage was found only in the self-paced reading task. The results are discussed in terms of language-universal and language-specific cues that enhance the discourse prominence of discourse entities.
Abstract
Current views of conceptual combination postulate that interpretations can be classified into two types; thematic-relation and property-mapping interpretations. In this study, a new model on the processing of noun-noun conceptual combination was proposed and two experiments were conducted to verify it. The model suggests that thematic-relation interpretation can be facilitated when there are any salient external properties in the head and the modifier is relevant to one of them. On the other hand, property-mapping interpretation can be facilitated when there are any salient internal properties in the modifier and the head has any relevant slot (dimension) to one of them. Two experiments examined whether external/internal properties in the heads/modifiers and relevance between modifier and head can facilitate property or relation interpretation by measuring interpretation times and degrees of interpretation consistency. The results showed that the interpretation time is faster and the interpretation consistency is higher when there are internal or external properties and their relevant slots as well. These results further suggest that the different roles of constituent concepts selectively affect the relevance between properties which consist of modifier and head. With regard to these results, it was discussed whether property-mapping interpretation and thematic-relation interpretation are caused by independent processes.