Semantic Priming of Progression Features in Events

Abstract

Event knowledge includes persons and objects and their roles in the event. This study investigated whether the progression of patients from a source to a resulting feature, such as the progression of hair that is cut from long to short, forms part of event representations. Subjects were presented with an event prime followed by two adjectives and asked to judge whether the adjectives were interrelated. Results showed that the semantic interrelation of two adjectives is recognized faster and more accurately when the adjectives denote source and resulting features of the patient of the primed event ("cutting": long-short). Furthermore, we found that presenting an event-related adjective in combination with an unrelated adjective makes it more difficult to recognize that the two adjectives are not interrelated, but only when the event-related adjective denotes a source feature. We argue that an inference mechanism automatically completes the representation of the event. We conclude that source and resulting features are represented in a goal-directed and chronological way.

Eyes as Windows to Minds: Psycholinguistics for Experimental Philosophy

“…For example, the verb 'dig' activates the instrument spade (Ferretti et al, 2001), 'arrest' activates the agent cop and the patient criminal (ibid. ), while telic verbs ('washing') swiftly activate both initial and resulting patient properties (dirty, clean) (Welke et al 2015). Conversely, typical agent-, patient-, instrument-, and location-nouns activate relevant verbs (Hare et al 2005).…”

Inappropriate stereotypical inferences? An adversarial collaboration in experimental ordinary language philosophy

“…This effort is picked up by a variety of process measures including pupil dilations (Sirois and Brisson 2014), longer reading times (Clifton et al 2007), and signature electrophysiological responses ('N400s') (Kutas and Federmeier 2011). Studies using priming or the cancellation paradigm have shown that verbs prompt parallel probabilistic inferences to typical features of agents, patients, and instruments (Ferretti et al 2001;Harmon-Vukic et al 2009;Welke et al 2015).…”

Lingering stereotypes: Salience bias in philosophical argument

“…When the events or actions denoted typically involve particular kinds of agents, “patients” acted on, instruments, or relations between them, associated stereotypes include typical features of thematic role‐fillers (Tanenhaus, Carlson & Trueswell, ). For example, “frighten” immediately suggests the agent‐properties mean , scary , ugly , and big , as well as the patient properties scared , small , and weak (McRae et al, ), while telic verbs (e.g., “washing”) swiftly activate both initial and resulting patient properties ( dirty , clean ) (Welke et al, ). These complex stereotypes have internal (thematic) structure and feature activation depends upon thematic fit: Sentence fragments like “She was arrested by the ___” activate typical agents ( cop ) in post‐verbal position only when they leave the agent role blank, but not when they leave open the patient, as in “She arrested the ___,” (Ferretti et al, ; cf.…”