Creativity has emerged in the focus of neurocognitive research in the past decade. However, a heterogeneous pattern of brain areas has been implicated as underpinning the neural correlates of creativity. One explanation for these divergent findings lies in the fact that creativity is not usually investigated in terms of its many underlying…

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break,…

Many models have hypothesized that multimedia comprehension requires the concurrent processing of verbal and visuospatial information by limited information processing systems. However, in spite of the emphasis devoted to the concurrent processing of verbal and visuospatial information, little research has so far investigated the specific role…

Discusses the possibility of storing a compressed form of a translated version of a text that takes advantage of the availability of the original version for more accurate understanding. Experiments that used humans and then computers to predict texts letter by letter are described. (12 references) (LRW)

Undergraduates read a passage describing social groupings of fish, their color, depth, size and diet. Subjects concurrently viewed a graphic organizer (GO) presenting this information in a matrix-like format. Half the GOs were semantically congruent with the text, organized according to social grouping; the others were spatially organized.…

Explores what might be the optimal query expansion (QE) processing method with semantically coded thesauri. Examines whether QE via semantically coded thesauri terminology is more effective in the "automatic" or "interactive" processing environment. Results revealed that synonyms and partial synonyms and narrower terms are…

Describes the logical construction of several Russian hypertext systems, and discusses the navigational algorithms used, nodes selected, and coherence demanded. Several illustrative graphs are included, and an overview of the development of linking structures producing logical-semantic models is given. (20 references) (EA)

Discusses language comprehension and describes a technology for computer-aided text analysis called READWARE and software from the READWARE family called the Research Assistant that measures the relatedness of words or phrases by examining their letters. The theory of Letter Semantics is explained, and paradigms for text processing in information…

Proposes a structure for natural language descriptions of the semantic content of visual materials that requires descriptions to be (modified) keywords, phrases, or simple sentences, with components that are grammatical relations common to many languages. This structure makes it easy to implement a collection's descriptions as a relational…

This paper describes a computational approach to certain problems of anaphora in natural language and argues in favor of formal meaning representation languages (MRLs) for natural language. After presenting arguments in favor of formal meaning representation languages, appropriate MRLs are discussed. Minimal requirements include provisions for…

This study was designed to assess whether negative transfer in children's paired-associate learning could be reduced by changing the levels of meaning at which stimuli were encoded on the two lists. It was hypothesized that changes in meaning levels from a first to a second list would result in less interference than conditions where stimuli…

The purposes of this study were to determine the nature of human semantic memory and to obtain knowledge usable in the future development of computer systems that can converse with people. The work was based on a computer model which is designed to comprehend English text, relating the text to information stored in a semantic data base that is…

To test the concept of "shape of information," 72 participants (half from an academic setting, half from the general public) examined 24 documents typically used in the academic environment. Results indicated that when document shape was evident, the document was immediately discernible to participants; when participants were required to…

Language teaching requires textbook material that contains the most frequent concepts of a language. The computer brings its tremendous information processing ability to the task of establishing word frequency rankings, but the computer is limited to counting word-forms and not semantic concepts. The most recent word frequency dictionaries, in…

Describes a semantic content recognition process based on relatively small sets of context relators, logical relators, phase and state relators, and aspect relators, which are connecting tools in describing meanings in process of concept formation and human communication. Semantic analysis of textual data by computer is tested for feasibility.…