Biomedical subjects

Michael P Kaschak

Publications and source records attributed to Michael P Kaschak.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Body posture facilitates retrieval of autobiographical memories.

We assessed potential facilitation of congruent body posture on access to and retention of autobiographical memories in younger and older adults. Response times were shorter when body positions during prompted retrieval of autobiographical events were similar to the body positions in the original events than when body position was incongruent. Free recall of the autobiographical events two weeks later was also better for congruent-posture than for incongruent-posture memories. The findings were similar for younger and older adults, except for the finding that free recall was more accurate in younger adults than in older adults in the congruent condition. We discuss these findings in the context of theories of embodied cognition.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Encoding in verbal, enacted and autobiographical tasks in young and older adults.

Young and older adults participated in a task in which they were asked to say items printed on a card out loud (verbal condition), act out a command printed on a card (enactment condition), and retrieve memories associated with a theme or action printed on a card (autobiographical encoding condition). The results indicate that items in the subject-performed task and autobiographical memory condition were remembered equally well, and both were remembered better than verbal stimuli. Age differences were absent in the verbal condition, but present in both the enactment condition and the autobiographical encoding condition. We discuss the results in the context of earlier findings demonstrating a subject-performed task advantage in mixed-presentation lists (Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997) and age differences in enactment tasks (Kausler & Lichty, 1982).

Adult↗

PubMed2006

What this construction needs is generalized.

What is the nature of the knowledge that readers acquire as they learn to comprehend a novel construction in their native language? This question was explored in two experiments that examined the extent to which readers who learn a new construction are able to extend it to sentence contexts other than the one in which it initially appeared. Readers were trained on the needs construction ("The meal needs cooked given that dinner is in an hour") and then were presented with examples of the construction in a different sentential context ("John thinks that what the meal needs is cooked given that dinner is in an hour"). The results show that readers have little difficulty comprehending the needs construction in the new context, even when the construction is used with a different verb. These findings are discussed with respect to theories of structural priming and sentence processing.

Attention↗

PubMed2005

Recent experience affects the strength of structural priming.

In two experiments, we explore how recent experience with particular syntactic constructions affects the strength of the structural priming observed for those constructions. The results suggest that (1) the strength of structural priming observed for double object and prepositional object constructions is affected by the relative frequency with which each construction was produced earlier in the experiment, and (2) the effects of relative frequency are not modulated by the temporal placement of the tokens of each construction within the experiment.

Humans↗

PubMed2005

Perception of motion affects language processing.

Recently developed accounts of language comprehension propose that sentences are understood by constructing a perceptual simulation of the events being described. These simulations involve the re-activation of patterns of brain activation that were formed during the comprehender's interaction with the world. In two experiments we explored the specificity of the processing mechanisms required to construct simulations during language comprehension. Participants listened to (and made judgments on) sentences that described motion in a particular direction (e.g. "The car approached you"). They simultaneously viewed dynamic black-and-white stimuli that produced the perception of movement in the same direction as the action specified in the sentence (i.e. towards you) or in the opposite direction as the action specified in the sentence (i.e. away from you). Responses were faster to sentences presented concurrently with a visual stimulus depicting motion in the opposite direction as the action described in the sentence. This suggests that the processing mechanisms recruited to construct simulations during language comprehension are also used during visual perception, and that these mechanisms can be quite specific.

Cognition↗

PubMed2004

This construction needs learned.

Four experiments are presented in which adults learned to comprehend a new syntactic construction in their native language. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that adults quickly learn to comprehend the new construction and generalize it to new verbs. Experiment 3 shows that experience with the novel construction affects the processing of a construction already known to the participants and with which the novel construction is temporarily ambiguous. Experiment 4 demonstrates that the influence of a novel construction on the comprehension of familiar constructions is affected by the processing that occurred while the novel construction was learned. These results are discussed in the context of the constraint satisfaction approach to sentence processing and episodic-processing accounts of memory.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Putting words in perspective.

In this article, we explore the nature of the conceptual knowledge retrieved when people use words to think about objects. If conceptual knowledge is used to simulate and guide action in the world, then how one can interact with an object should be reflected in the speed of retrieval and the content that is retrieved. This prediction was tested in three experiments in which a part verification procedure was used. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that speed of part verification varied with the perspective imposed on the object by the language used to name the object (e.g., "You are driving a car" or "You are fueling a car"). In Experiment 3, parts were chosen so that actions directed toward them (on the real object) require movement upward (e.g., the roof of a car) or downward (e.g., the wheels of a car). Orthogonally, responding "yes" required an upward or a downward movement to a response button. Responding in a direction incompatible with the part's location (e.g., responding downward to verify that a car has a roof) was slow relative to responding in a direction compatible with the part's location. These results provide a strong link between concept knowledge and situated action.

Cognition↗

PubMed2004

On doing two things at once: temporal constraints on actions in language comprehension.

In two experiments, we investigated how text comprehension is influenced by the interaction between the properties of actions and the temporal relations specified by adverbs. Participants read short narratives describing a protagonist who performed two actions that involved similar sensorimotor systems (e.g., chopping wood and painting a fence) or different ones (e.g., whistling a melody and painting a fence). The actions were described as simultaneous or successive by means of the temporal adverbs while and after, respectively. Comprehension, both in Spanish and in English, was markedly impaired (longer reading times and lower subjective coherence) for sentences including the adverb while and actions involving the same sensorimotor system. However, when one of the same sensorimotor system actions was described as a mental plan (e.g., chopping wood and thinking of painting a fence), comprehension was equally easy with the adverbs while and after. These results are compatible with a revised version of the indexical hypothesis that specifies how comprehension is guided by syntax and embodied constraints within multiple noninteracting mental spaces.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Neuroimaging studies of language production and comprehension.

The 1990s were dubbed the "Decade of the Brain." During this time there was a marked increase in the amount of neuroimaging work observing how the brain accomplishes many tasks, including the processing of language. In this chapter we review the past 15 years of neuroimaging research on language production and comprehension. The findings of these studies indicate that the processing involved in language use occurs in diffuse brain regions. These regions include Broca's and Wernicke's areas, primary auditory and visual cortex, and frontal regions in the left hemisphere, as well as in the right hemisphere homologues to these regions. We conclude the chapter by discussing the future of neuroimaging research into language production and comprehension.

Brain Mapping↗

PubMed2002

Grounding language in action.

We report a new phenomenon associated with language comprehension: the action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE). Participants judged whether sentences were sensible by making a response that required moving toward or away from their bodies. When a sentence implied action in one direction (e.g., "Close the drawer" implies action away from the body), the participants had difficulty making a sensibility judgment requiring a response in the opposite direction. The ACE was demonstrated for three sentences types: imperative sentences, sentences describing the transfer of concrete objects, and sentences describing the transfer of abstract entities, such as "Liz told you the story." These dataare inconsistent with theories of language comprehension in which meaning is represented as a set of relations among nodes. Instead, the data support an embodied theory of meaning that relates the meaning of sentences to human action.

Humans↗