Patterns of conceptualization reflected in figurative language are motivated by embodied experience, and comparisons of emotion metaphors in English, Mandarin Chinese and other languages have shown widespread similarity in such metaphors cross-culturally (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999; King 1989; Yu 1996; Kovecses 2005). Nonetheless, we can also…

Bortoloti and de Rose (2009) found evidence that the level of functional transfer is higher in equivalence classes generated by delayed matching to sample (DMTS) than in classes generated by simultaneous matching (SMTS). We attempted to replicate these findings with the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). Two experimental groups…

Sorting procedures are frequently adopted as an alternative to dissimilarity ratings to measure the dissimilarity of large sets of stimuli in a comparatively short time. However, systematic empirical research on the consequences of this experiment-design choice is lacking. We carried out a behavioral experiment to assess the extent to which…

Behavior analysis has exploited conceptual tools whose experimental validity has been amply demonstrated, but their relevance to large-scale and fine-grained behavioral phenomena remains uncertain, because the experimental analysis of these domains faces formidable obstacles of measurement and control. In this essay I suggest that, at least at the…

Naming a picture of a dog primes the subsequent naming of a picture of a dog (repetition priming) and interferes with the subsequent naming of a picture of a cat (semantic interference). Behavioral studies suggest that these effects derive from persistent changes in the way that words are activated and selected for production, and some have…

The authors identify 2 major types of statistical data from which semantic representations can be learned. These are denoted as "experiential data" and "distributional data". Experiential data are derived by way of experience with the physical world and comprise the sensory-motor data obtained through sense receptors. Distributional data, by…

Previous neuropsychological studies on acquired dyslexia revealed a double dissociation in reading impairments. Patients with phonological dyslexia have selective difficulty in reading pseudo-words, while those with surface dyslexia misread exception words. This double dissociation in reading abilities has often been reported in brain-damaged…

The most prominent theories of reading consider reading comprehension ability to be a direct consequence of lower-level reading skills. Recently however, research has shown that some children with poor comprehension ability perform normally on tests of lower-level skills (e.g., decoding). One promising line of behavioral research has found…

A comprehensive procedure to test if bilinguals generalize semantically between their languages yielded results which support the classifying of bilinguals as either coordinate or compound. (FWB)

In the experiments reported here grammaticalness and meaningfulness were found to be of much greater significance than word frequency, interword association or syntactic frame in the comprehension of deviant sentences. (Author/FWB)

It was determined that suprasegmental features effect the ability of very young children (3 years) to decide whether strings of words are to be treated as sentences or nonsentences, whereas for adults and older children grammatical cues alone suffice. (FWB)

Tests with mixed-language associative networks lent support to the theoretical contrast between compound and coordinate forms of bilingualism. (Author/FWB)

Multidimensional scaling yielded three comparable dimensions and the words fell into thematic clusters like those found among the problem behaviors. Results were similar to those reported earlier for the problematic behaviors. (Author/BEF)

TWENTY-EIGHT SS (SUBJECTS) WERE PRESENTED WITH COMPUTER-GENERATED AGRAMMATICAL STATEMENTS, AND ASKED TO CARRY OUT TWO TASKS ON EACH OF TWO EXPERIMENTAL DAYS. TASK 1 WAS A FORCED-CHOICE EXPERIMENT IN WHICH 50 PAIRS OF STATEMENTS WERE PRESENTED AURALLY TO EACH S, WHO HAD TO SELECT THAT MEMBER OF THE PAIR WHICH HE FELT WAS THE BEST APPROXIMATION TO A…