The first report of a connection between vocabulary learning and phonological short-term memory was published in 1988 (Baddeley, Papagno, & Vallar, 1988). At that time, both Susan Gathercole and I were involved in longitudinal studies, investigating the relation between nonword repetition and language learning. We both found a connection. Now,…

Schreuder and Baayen (Schreuder. R., & Baayen, R. H. (1997). How complex simplex words can be. "Journal of Memory and Language" 37, 118-139) report that lexical decision times to nouns are not sensitive to the cumulative frequency of the noun's morphological derivatives in its ''morphological family'', even though such a cumulative frequency…

Two striking contrasts currently exist in the sentence processing literature. First, whereas adult readers rely heavily on lexical information in the generation of syntactic alternatives, adult listeners in world-situated eye-gaze studies appear to allow referential evidence to override strong countervailing lexical biases (Tanenhaus,…

We examined the influence of semantic transparency on morphological facilitation in English in three lexical decision experiments. Decision latencies to visual targets (e.g., CASUALNESS) were faster after semantically transparent (e.g., CASUALLY) than semantically opaque (e.g., CASUALTY) primes whether primes were auditory and presented…

The semantic category effect represents a category dissociation between biological and nonbiological objects in picture naming. The aim of this preliminary study was to further examine this phenomenon, and to explore the possible association between the effect and subjective emotional valence for the named objects. Using a speeded picture naming…

Stress assignment to three- and four-syllable Italian words is not predictable by rule, but needs lexical look-up. The present study investigated whether stress assignment to low-frequency Italian words is determined by stress regularity, or by the number of words sharing the final phonological segment and the stress pattern (stress neighborhood…

Fourteen native speakers of German heard normal sentences, sentences which were either lacking dynamic pitch variation (flattened speech), or comprised of intonation contour exclusively (degraded speech). Participants were to listen carefully to the sentences and to perform a rehearsal task. Passive listening to flattened speech compared to normal…

Processing abilities in aphasia, and the nature of processing breakdowns, were the focuses of this investigation. Individuals with either fluent or nonfluent aphasia, plus a control group, participated in a cross-modal lexical priming task designed to elicit priming effects when activation of inference interpretations occurred. Comprehension of…

It has long been known that the number of letters in a word has more of an effect on recognition speed and accuracy in the left visual field (LVF) than in the right visual field (RVF) provided that the word is presented in a standard, horizontal format. After considering the basis of the length by visual field interaction two further differences…

This paper surveys work on applying the insights of lexicalized grammars to low-level discourse, to show the value of positing an autonomous grammar for low-level discourse in which words (or idiomatic phrases) are associated with discourse-level predicate-argument structures or modification structures that convey their syntactic-semantic meaning…

Models of speech production assume that syllables play a functional role in the process of word-form encoding in speech production. In this study, we investigate this claim and specifically provide evidence about the level at which syllables come into play. We report two studies using an "odd-man-out" variant of the "implicit priming paradigm" to…

A well-known asymmetry exists in the bilingual masked priming literature in which lexical decision is used: namely, masked primes in the dominant language (L1) facilitate decision times on targets in the less dominant language (L2), but not vice versa. In semantic categorization, on the other hand, priming is symmetrical. In Experiments 1-3 we…

This study investigates whether or not masked form priming effects in the naming task depend on the number of shared segments between prime and target. Dutch participants named bisyllabic words, which were preceded by visual masked primes. When primes shared the initial segment(s) with the target, naming latencies were shorter than in a control…

The aim of the present research was to determine whether the effect that phonological similarity has on immediate serial recall is influenced by the consistency and position of phonemes within words. In comparison to phonologically dissimilar lists, when the stimulus lists rhyme there is a facilitative effect on the recall of item information and…

Confrontation naming is impaired in neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Some behavioural observations suggest a common source of impaired naming across these patient groups, while others find partially unique patterns of naming difficulty. We hypothesized…