There is a general debate as to whether constituent representations are accessed in compound processing. The present study addresses this issue, exploiting the properties of Italian compounds to test the role of headedness and semantic transparency in constituent access. In a first experiment, a lexical decision task was run on nominal compounds.…

Five experiments were conducted to examine how unsuccessful retrieval influences learning and subsequent memory. We used a cued-recall paradigm that produces many unsuccessful retrieval attempts (followed by feedback) and allows comparisons to be made between later memory for these trials and trials that only required reading or studying the…

In the present work, we conducted a series of experiments to explore the processing stages required to name numerals presented in different notations. To this end, we used the semantic blocking paradigm previously used in psycholinguist studies. We found a facilitative effect of the semantic blocked context relative to the mixed context for Arabic…

This dissertation investigates the interaction between form and function in Mandarin Chinese by empirically examining the interactions of core semantic roles (Agent and Patient) and the syntactic representation of those interactions in semantically transitive events. First, I demonstrate that syntactic structures and functions are intertwined with…

In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the qualitatively different representational framework that supports the view of different…

Basic-level picture naming is hampered by the presence of a semantically related context word (compared to an unrelated word), whereas picture categorization is facilitated by a semantically related context word. This reversal of the semantic context effect has been explained by assuming that in categorization tasks, basic-level distractor words…

Using the DRM paradigm, our experiments examined the activation and monitoring of memories in semantic and phonological networks. Participants viewed lists of words and/or pseudohomophones (e.g., "dreem"). In Experiment 1, participants verbally recalled lists of semantic associates or attempted to write them as they appeared during study. False…

The role of morphological, semantic, and form-based factors in the early stages of visual word recognition was investigated across different SOAs in a masked priming paradigm, focusing on English derivational morphology. In a first set of experiments, stimulus pairs co-varying in morphological decomposability and in semantic and orthographic…

Fourth-grade students who participated in a yearlong, whole-class teaching experiment not only reconceptualized natural numbers but also generated flexible solution strategies to perform numerical computations mentally and in writing. Students' reconceptualization of number was mediated by their perceived resemblance between the physical action of…