On the standard, neo-Gricean view, most is semantically lower bounded but may give rise to the meaning "not all" through scalar implicature (Horn (1972)). More recent proposals have claimed that most does not generate a scalar implicature but is semantically both lower and upper bounded (Ariel (2004; in press)). In this article, we investigate the…

We present statistical analyses of the large-scale structure of 3 types of semantic networks: word associations, WordNet, and Roget's Thesaurus. We show that they have a small-world structure, characterized by sparse connectivity, short average path lengths between words, and strong local clustering. In addition, the distributions of the number of…

In the experiments outlined in this article, the authors investigate lexical access processes in language production. In their earlier work, T. Pechmann and D. Zerbst (2002) reported evidence for grammatical category constraints in a picture-word interference task. Although grammatical category information was not activated when subjects produced…

Processing time and memory for sentences were examined as a function of the degree of semantic and causal relatedness between sentences in short narratives. In Experiments 1-2B, semantic and causal relatedness between sentence pairs was independently manipulated. Causal relatedness was assessed through pretesting and semantic relatedness was…

California and Texas mandate 75% to 80% decodable texts for first-grade reading programs, yet these percentages have no empirical base. This study examines the text selections in 6 first-grade programs from the perspective of lexical, semantic, and syntactic features. The composition of text differed across the 6 programs with respect to length,…

Wernicke (1900, as cited in G. H. Eggert, 1977) suggested that semantic knowledge arises from the interaction of perceptual representations of objects and words. The authors present a parallel distributed processing implementation of this theory, in which semantic representations emerge from mechanisms that acquire the mappings between visual…

Uses a quasi-experimental design to compare the social adjustment of 21 children who received the Language for Learning program with those of 24 children enrolled in a comparison school. Finds that the Language for Learning program produced statistically and educationally significant effects, including improvements in social skills and reductions…

Two prototype voice output communication aids were implemented to compare methods of graphic symbol message formulation; one emulated current devices that require syntactical ordering of icons (Default) and the other used semantic frames (iconCHAT). Message constructions of eight typically developing children (7-10 years of age) using both…

Studies of patients with category-specific agnosia (CSA) have given rise to multiple theories of object recognition, most of which assume the existence of a stable, abstract semantic memory system. We applied an episodic view of memory to questions raised by CSA in a series of studies examining normal observers' recall of newly learned attributes…

Spoken language comprehension requires the coordination of different subprocesses in time. After the initial acoustic analysis the system has to extract segmental information such as phonemes, syntactic elements and lexical-semantic elements as well as suprasegmental information such as accentuation and intonational phrases, i.e., prosody.…

In 2001, the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission released for sale a new "instant lottery ticket" "scratch-and-play" game card named "Caesars [sic] Palace[R]" (played by scratching the surface of each card at designated spots to reveal hidden numbers or images). It offered ten grand prizes of $1,000,000 each and a…

Studies of sentence comprehension deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients suggest that language processing involves circuits connecting subcortical and cortical regions. Anatomically segregated neural circuits appear to support different cognitive and motor functions. To investigate which functions are implicated in PD comprehension…

This study examined the development of neural processing of auditorally presented words in high functioning children with autism. The purpose was to test the hypothesis that electrophysiological abnormalities associated with impairments in early cortical processing and in semantic processing persist into early adolescence in autistic individuals.…

Recent debates on lexical ambiguity resolution have centered on the subordinate-bias effect, in which reading time is longer on a biased ambiguous word in a subordinate-biasing context than on a control word. The nature of the control word--namely, whether it matched the frequency of the ambiguous word's overall word form or its contextually…

This study examines the impact of different metaphors on the process of hypertext construction. Two groups of 20 college students with no experience in hypertext construction received introductory explanations on the text format "hypertext" based on either a book or a space metaphor. Then they had to construct hypertexts by linking prepared nodes…