Cross-language facilitation, semantic blindness, and the relation between language and memory: A reply to Altarriba and Soltano

Abstract

This comment corrects some inaccuracies, points to some methodological problems, and makes three substantive observations regarding the Altarriba and Soltano (1996) article. First, token individuation theory does not explain what is new and interesting in the Altarriba and Soltano data, namely cross-language semantic facilitation in lists and a list-sentence effect, that is, a large difference in the effect of semantic repetition when identical translation equivalents occurred in sentences versus lists. Second, Altarriba and Soltano's small and nonsignificant semantic blindness effect for translation equivalents in split-language sentences is attributable to the peculiar nature of their materials, procedures, analyses, and experimental design. These problems nullify their conclusion that semantic blindness does not occur, and we discuss several clear cases where semantic blindness has been demonstrated. Finally,we suggest an explanation for Altarriba and Soltano's unexplained effects (cross-language facilitation and the list-sentence effect) and show why these effects are important for the general issue of relations between language and memory.This commentary doesn't just discuss flaws and inaccuracies in the target article (Altarriba & Soltano, 1996). It also examines three new and unexplained effects in the Altarriba and Soltano data: cross-language facilitation in lists, a list-sentence difference, and the nonoccurrence ofsemantic blindness (SB) in the split-language sentences of their Experiment 1B. The commentary then addresses some theoretical and methodological implications ofthese effects and shows why they are important for anyone interested in the relation between language and memory. CROSS-LANGUAGE FACILITATIONCross-language facilitation is the unexplained new effect that appeared in Altarriba and Soltano (1996, Experiment 2), where the procedure was as follows: Proficient bilinguals immediately recalled rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) lists consisting critically of three words that were preceded and followed by masking stimuli (symbol strings) that participants were instructed to ignore. If the first and last words in the lists are labeled the "pretarget" and "target," respectively, the dependent variable was recall of the target (e.g., drive) as a function of whether its pretarget was identical (e.g., drive-drive), semantically identical (i.e., a translation equivalent, as in

Aging on the input versus output side: Theoretical implications of age-linked asymmetries between detecting versus retrieving orthographic information.

“…One was to define correct retrieval as correct inclusion of the added or target letter (i.e., correct spelling of the entire word was unnecessary). The other was to conditionalize correct target recall on inclusion of the pretarget letter: Responses containing missing pretargets (e.g., w i ldierness misproduced as weldness, and cal e ndear misproduced as calander ) were discarded for logical and theoretical reasons that have been noted in many recent studies of RD (see, e.g., MacKay et al, 1994; MacKay, Abrams, Pedroza, & Miller, 1996). If a participant does not perceive the pretarget, a repeated-target trial is unrepeated from a psychological point of view, so that including these trials in the means would underestimate the true degree of retrieval RD.…”

“…The present paradigm clarified this issue by demonstrating that RD is both a perceptual phenomenon (because detection was better for unrepeated- than repeated-letter misspellings) and a retrieval phenomenon (because retrieval was better for unrepeated- than repeated-letter misspellings). However, neither perceptual RD nor retrieval RD interacted with aging in the present data, ruling out the perception versus retrieval dimension as a viable basis for explaining the differing age effects in MacKay et al (1994) versus the present study.Another distinguishing procedural feature is that the present paradigm presents the repeated elements simultaneouslyA2 in different spatial positions, whereas the standard RSVP paradigm presents the repeated elements sequentially in the same spatial position, which allows a role for low-level forward and backward visual masking in RD (see MacKay, Abrams, Pedroza, & Miller, 1996). However, we can think of no way that reduced forward and backward visual masking in the present paradigm might explain the different pattern of age effects in the two studies.In lieu of a procedurally based account, theoretical details of how the repeated elements interact to cause RD in the two paradigms warrant further examination.…”

“…Another distinguishing procedural feature is that the present paradigm presents the repeated elements simultaneouslyA2 in different spatial positions, whereas the standard RSVP paradigm presents the repeated elements sequentially in the same spatial position, which allows a role for low-level forward and backward visual masking in RD (see MacKay, Abrams, Pedroza, & Miller, 1996). However, we can think of no way that reduced forward and backward visual masking in the present paradigm might explain the different pattern of age effects in the two studies.…”

Emotional stimuli in rapid serial visual presentation

“…Regarding the first point, an influence of the semantic properties of stimuli on RB has been reported by several authors including MacKay, Abrams, Pedroza, and Miller (1996), MacKay and Miller (1994), O'Reilly and Neely (1993) and Parasuraman and Martin (2001); but see Altarriba & Soltano (1996) and Kanwisher & Potter (1990). According to Bavelier (1994), object tokens are the result of a gradual assembling of different types or codes (visual, phonological, and semantic) with a single spatiotemporal token.…”

Can cognitive aging contribute to fundamental psychological theory? Repetition deafness as a test case

“…Under this framework, an inhibitory process that follows activation of lexical and phonological nodes makes the second instance of a rapidly presented word harder to detect (see, e.g., Marohn, 1991, andMacKay, Abrams, Pedroza, &Miller, 1996, for detailed theories within the inhibition framework). Although inhibitory processes have never been studied in older adults for the rapid rates of auditory processing that are required to induce RD (see , young adults should exhibit more RD than older adults if RD reflects inhibitory processes that resemble those examined in other paradigms.…”