Development of Memory Structures for Homographs Using Pathfinder Network Representations

Abstract

Some studies with children have shown that there is no semantic priming at short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in lexical decision and naming tasks for homographs. The predictions of spreading activation theories might explain this missing effect. There may be differences in children's and adults' memory structures. We have explored this hypothesis. The development of memory structure representations for homographs was measured by a Pathfinder algorithm. In Experiment 1, the three dependent variables were: the number of links in the network, closeness measures (C), and distances between nodes. Results revealed developmental differences in network structure representations in adults and children. In Experiment 2, results revealed that these differences were not due to the cohort effect. In Experiment 3, the relationship between associative strength, as measured by associative norms, and distances, as measured by Pathfinder algorithm, was explored. The results of these three experiments and empirical research from semantic priming experiments show that these differences in memory structure representations could be one of the sources of the missing semantic priming effect in children. Keywords: Pathfinder, memory structure representations, semantic priming, cohort effect Algunos estudios con niños han mostrado que no existe facilitación semántica, con intervalos de tiempo cortos, en tareas de decisión léxica y en nombrar en homógrafos. Las predicciones de las teorías de difusión de la activación podrían explicar la ausencia de este efecto. Podría haber diferencias en las estructuras de memoria entre niños y adultos. Nosotros hemos explorado esta hipótesis. El desarrollo de las representaciones de estructuras de memoria para homógrafos se midió por el algoritmo Pathfinder. En el primer experimento, las tres variables dependientes fueron: el número de conexiones en la estructura, las medidas C y las distancias entre nodos. Los resultados revelaron diferencias evolutivas en las representaciones de las estructuras de red entre niños y adultos. En el experimento 2, los resultados mostraron que estas diferencias no eran debidas al efecto de cohorte. En el experimento 3, se exploró la relación entre la fuerza asociativa, medida por las normas de asociación, y las distancias, como medida del algoritmo Pathfinder. Los resultados de estos tres experimentos y la investigación empírica de los experimentos de facilitación semántica muestran que estas diferencias en las representaciones de estructuras de memoria podrían ser una de las fuentes para explicar la ausencia de facilitación semántica en niños. Palabras clave: Pathfinder, representaciones de estructuras de memoria, facilitación semántica, efecto cohorte

Semantic Priming Effects in a Lexical Decision Task: Comparing third Graders and College Students in two Different Stimulus Onset Asynchronies

“…This is an important difference since it is known that homographs are processed differently (Gorfein, 2001) and show less semantic facilitation (Milberg, Blumstein, & Dworetzky, 1987) than words with only one meaning. It is plausible that children showed no SPE when primes were homographs at shorter SOAs because they have differences in memory structure representations compared with adults (Nievas & Justicia, 2003).…”

Lexical Processing of Ambiguous Words: Dominance or Associative Strength?

“…However, Frost and Bentin (1992) explicitly measured and controlled the degree of relation between prime and related targets. It is known that degrees of relation and associative strength are related (e.g., Experiment 3 in Nievas & Justicia, 2003); that is, the higher the degree of relation, the more associative strength. Other studies showed that an increase in associative strength produced an increase in positive priming (Cañas, 1990;Chiarello, Burgess, Richards, & Pollock, 1990;De Groot, Thomassen, & Hudson, 1982;Fischler, 1977;Lupker, 1984;Perea & Rosa, 2002).…”