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Biomedical subjects

A K Romney

Publications and source records attributed to A K Romney.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Shared cognitive representations of perceptual and semantic structures of basic colors in Chinese and English.

Two perceptual structures (based on colors) and one semantic structure (based on names) of eight basic chromatic colors were obtained from three judged similarity tasks for 41 Mandarin Chinese-speaking females in Taiwan and 35 English-speaking females in the United States. Major findings include the following: (i) there are robust and reliable individual differences among individuals, (ii) the structures for Chinese and English speakers are similar, and (iii) the semantic structure of color names is similar to the perceptual structures of colors. The results place strong constraints on theories relating to individual differences, linguistic relativity, and the relation of perceptual and semantic structures for colors.

China↗
PubMed2000

Statistical methods for characterizing similarities and differences between semantic structures.

This paper describes a variety of statistical methods for obtaining precise quantitative estimates of the similarities and differences in the structures of semantic domains in different languages. The methods include comparing mean correlations within and between groups, principal components analysis of interspeaker correlations, and analysis of variance of speaker by question data. Methods for graphical displays of the results are also presented. The methods give convergent results that are mutually supportive and equivalent under suitable interpretation. The methods are illustrated on the semantic domain of emotion terms in a comparison of the semantic structures of native English and native Japanese speaking subjects. We suggest that, in comparative studies concerning the extent to which semantic structures are universally shared or culture-specific, both similarities and differences should be measured and compared rather than placing total emphasis on one or the other polar position.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1998

Developmental patterns in the cytoarchitecture of the human cerebral cortex from birth to 6 years examined by correspondence analysis.

This paper uses correspondence analysis to examine the developmental patterns in the cytoarchitecture of the human cerebral cortex from birth to 72 months. The study is based on data collected by the late J. L. Conel, which consist of over 4 million individual measurements of six microscopic neuroanatomic features for each of six cortical layers in 46 cytoarchitecturally distinct regions. We analyze 1,727 profiles of development over eight age-points (term birth, 1, 3, 6, 15, 24, 48, and 72 postnatal months) resulting from the combinations of neuroanatomic feature, cortical layer, and brain cytoarchitectural region in the Conel data. The profiles for any given combination of feature and layer are found to be remarkably similar in all regions of the brain, and therefore the developmental patterns of different cytoarchitectural regions are not distinguishable from one another. Developmental change is most rapid at the earlier stages; of the total change in profile patterns observed, more than one-third occurs between birth and 6 months, about one-third occurs between 6 and 15 months, and less than one-third occurs between 15 and 72 months. The majority of the variance in developmental profiles is accounted for by the six microscopic, neuroanatomic features. Correspondence analysis shows that Conel's data are highly consistent and reliable.

Aging↗
PubMed1997

Cultural universals: measuring the semantic structure of emotion terms in English and Japanese.

Research is presented on the semantic structure of 15 emotion terms as measured by judged-similarity tasks for monolingual English-speaking and monolingual and bilingual Japanese subjects. A major question is the relative explanatory power of a single shared model for English and Japanese versus culture-specific models for each language. The data support a shared model for the semantic structure of emotion terms even though some robust and significant differences are found between English and Japanese structures. The Japanese bilingual subjects use a model more like English when performing tasks in English than when performing the same task in Japanese.

Confidence Intervals↗
PubMed1996

Culture as shared cognitive representations.

Culture consists of shared cognitive representations in the minds of individuals. This paper investigates the extent to which English speakers share the "same" semantic structure of English kinship terms. The semantic structure is defined as the arrangement of the terms relative to each other as represented in a metric space in which items judged more similar are placed closer to each other than items judged as less similar. The cognitive representation of the semantic structure, residing in the mind of an individual, is measured by judged similarity tasks involving comparisons among terms. Using six independent measurements, from each of 122 individuals, correspondence analysis represents the data in a common multidimensional spatial representation. Judged by a variety of statistical procedures, the individuals in our sample share virtually identical cognitive representations of the semantic structure of kinship terms. This model of culture accounts for 70-90% of the total variability in these data. We argue that our findings on kinship should generalize to all semantic domains--e.g., animals, emotions, etc. The investigation of semantic domains is important because they may reside in localized functional units in the brain, because they relate to a variety of cognitive processes, and because they have the potential to provide methods for diagnosing individual breakdowns in the structure of cognitive representations typical of such ailments as Alzheimer disease.

Journal Article↗