Parafoveal preview benefit is an implicit measure of lexical activation in reading. PB has been demonstrated for orthographic and phonological but not for semantically related information in English. In contrast, semantic PB is obtained in German and Chinese. We propose that these language differences reveal differential resource demands and timing of phonological and semantic decoding in different orthographic systems.

We examined the relation between home literacy environment (HLE) and early literacy development in a sample of children learning four alphabetic orthographies varying in orthographic consistency (English, Dutch, German, and Greek). Seven hundred and fourteen children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and tested on emergent literacy skills (vocabulary, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness) at the beginning of Grade 1 and on word reading fluency and spelling at the end of Grade 1, the beginning of Grade (...) 2, and the end of Grade 2. Their parents responded to a questionnaire assessing HLE [parent teaching (PT), shared book reading (SBR), access to literacy resources (ALR)] at the beginning of Grade 1. Results showed first that PT was associated with letter knowledge or phonological awareness in Dutch and Greek, while ALR was associated with emergent literacy skills in all languages. SBR did not predict any cognitive or early literacy skills in any language. Second, PT and ALR had indirect effects on literacy outcomes via different emergent literacy skills in all languages. These findings suggest that not all HLE components are equally important for emergent literacy skills, reading fluency, and spelling. No specific trend in the role of orthographic consistency in the aforementioned relations emerged, which suggests that other factors may account for the observed differences across languages when children start receiving formal reading instruction in Grade 1. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 3, March 2022.

In the current study, the orthographic knowledge required for writing Chinese characters was assessed among participants with L1 Vietnamese background who learn Chinese as a foreign language. A total of 42 undergraduates were recruited. They were invited to participate in a delayed Chinese character copying task consisting of 32 characters. Their Chinese character reading abilities were also obtained using a character naming task. All the tests were conducted online during the pandemic in 2021. Results indicated that the participants’ accuracy (...) in the copying task was affected by the familiarity of the characters and the number of strokes of the characters. These effects minimized as reading performance increased. In the inter-stroke interval analysis, results indicated a significant boundary effect where ISIs between orthographic units were longer than ISIs within orthographic units, showing the participants’ tendency to chunk Chinese characters into functional units when they write. Only high achievers in the reading task demonstrated the use of both large and small grain-size units in writing, while the low achievers only used small grain-size units in their writing. We suggest that the delayed copying task incorporated with handwriting measures is an effective method to assess orthographic knowledge of L2 Chinese learners. (shrink)

Using the dual-route reading model as a framework, this study investigated the following research questions on Hangul reading: Which orthographic units influence the reading performance of Korean-speaking children? In addition, do the influential units change as the children grow up? To answer these questions, we tested the effects of age, frequency, lexicality, and two types of length—the numbers of letters and syllable blocks —and the interactions of these factors in the reading performance of Korean-speaking preschool and primary school children (...) from first to third grade. Regarding reading latencies, there was a significant three-way interaction of age × lexicality × length regardless of the type of length. This interaction indicated that, for words only, the interaction between age and length was significant. Accordingly, the length effect decreased as children’s age increased. When reading latencies for words were analyzed with a mixed-effect model consisting of three factors—age, frequency, and length—neither a main effect of syllable block length nor an interaction of syllable block length with age was significant. In contrast, the interaction of age × letter length in word reading latencies remained significant. The length effect was smaller as children’s age increased. In addition, the frequency effect was significant and interacted significantly with age. The frequency effect increased as children’s age increased. In conclusion, significant frequency effects indicate that Korean-speaking children use the lexical process in addition to the non-lexical process when reading Hangul words. Importantly, as children grow up, a larger orthographic unit, that is, words, is more strongly related to reading performance, whereas the influence of the smaller orthographic unit, that is, letters, decreases. (shrink)

In this study, we use temporally aligned word embeddings and a large diachronic corpus of English to quantify language change in a data-driven, scalable way, which is grounded in language use. We show a unique and reliable relation between measures of language change and age of acquisition (AoA) while controlling for frequency, contextual diversity, concreteness, length, dominant part of speech, orthographic neighborhood density, and diachronic frequency variation. We analyze measures of language change tackling both the change in lexical representations (...) and the change in the relation between lexical representations and the words with the most similar usage patterns, showing that they capture different aspects of language change. Our results show a unique relation between language change and AoA, which is stronger when considering neighborhood-level measures of language change: Words with more coherent diachronic usage patterns tend to be acquired earlier. The results support theories positing a link between ontogenetic and ethnogenetic processes in language. (shrink)

In isolated English word reading, readers have the optimal performance when their initial eye fixation is directed to the area between the beginning and word center, that is, the optimal viewing position (OVP). Thus, how well readers voluntarily direct eye gaze to this OVP during isolated word reading may be associated with reading performance. Using Eye Movement analysis with Hidden Markov Models, we discovered two representative eye movement patterns during lexical decisions through clustering, which focused at the OVP and the (...) word center, respectively. Higher eye movement similarity to the OVP-focusing pattern predicted faster lexical decision time in addition to cognitive abilities and lexical knowledge. However, the OVP-focusing pattern was associated with longer isolated single letter naming time, suggesting conflicting visual abilities required for identifying isolated letters and multi-letter words. In contrast, in both word and pseudoword naming, although clustering did not reveal an OVP-focused pattern, higher consistency of the first fixation as measured in entropy predicted faster naming time in addition to cognitive abilities and lexical knowledge. Thus, developing a consistent eye movement pattern focusing on the OVP is essential for word orthographic processing and reading fluency. This finding has important implications for interventions for reading difficulties. (shrink)

Studies have suggested that visually presented words are obligatorily decomposed into constituents that could be mapped to language representations. The present study aims to elucidate how orthographic processing of one constituent affects the other and vice versa during a word recognition task. Chinese orthographic system has characters representing syllables and meanings instead of suffixation roles, and the majority of Chinese characters are phonograms that can be further decomposed into phonetic radical and semantic radical. We propose that semantic radical (...) combinability indexed by semantic radicals and the effect of phonological consistency indexed by phonetic radicals would interact with each other during the reading of Chinese phonograms. Twenty-six right-handed native Chinese speakers were recruited to the study. Participants were presented with phonograms divided into four conditions following their semantic radical combinability and phonological consistency. EEG signals were recorded throughout the covert naming task. Our results show that there is an interaction effect between phonological consistency and semantic radical combinability on the right hemisphere N170 activity while reading phonograms. Semantic radical combinability influenced the right hemisphere N170 during the process of low-consistency character reading but not high-consistency character reading. On the other hand, the left hemisphere N170 revealed a more significant activity during reading high-consistency characters and was not affected by radical combinability. In addition, while low-consistency characters revealed a larger P200 than high-consistency characters, the semantic radical combinability effect on P200 was only significant when participants were reading high-consistency characters but not low-consistency characters. These results provide new information about how ERPs are involved in word recognition within the context of interaction among orthographic and phonological dimensions. (shrink)

Le premier contresens (véritable erreur conceptuelle et non simple faute d’orthographe) consiste à écrire, en se référant au début de 1’article premier de la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen du 26 août 1789, que les hommes sont égaux « en droit » (au singulier), alors que c’est « en droits » (au pluriel) qu’ils sont censés l’être ; le deuxième contresens, à vouloir rattacher, dans l’adage latin « Cujus regio, ejus religio », regio, -onis (frontière, région, pays) (...) à rex, -regis (roi, souverain, monarque) ; le troisième contresens, à croire que « le beau risque » dont parle Platon dans le Phédon est lié à une sorte de pari sur l’immortalité de l’âme ; enfin (toujours à propos d’un texte de Platon, mais cette fois dans la République ), le quatrième contresens, à interpréter comme une obligation morale le retour dans la caverne de ceux qui d’abord y avaient été prisonniers. (shrink)

The effects of psycholinguistic variables on reading development are critical to the evaluation of theories about the reading system. Although we know that the development of reading depends on both individual differences (endogenous) and item-level effects (exogenous), developmental research has focused mostly on average-level performance, ignoring individual differences. We investigated how the development of word recognition in Chinese children in both Chinese and English is affected by (a) item-level, exogenous effects (word frequency, radical consistency, and curricular grade level); (b) (...) subject-level, endogenous individual differences (orthographic awareness and phonological awareness); and (c) their interactive effect. We tested native Chinese (Putonghua)-speaking children (n = 763) in grades 1 to 6 with both Chinese character and English word identification (lexical) decision tasks. Our findings show that (a) there were effects of both word frequency and age of acquisition in both Chinese and English, but these item-level effects generally weakened with increasing age; (b) individual differences in phonological and orthographic awareness each contributed to successful performance; and (c) in Chinese, item-level effects were weaker for more proficient readers. We contend that our findings can be explained by theoretical models that incorporate cumulative learning as the basis for development of item-level effects in the reading system. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the learning of new grapheme-phoneme correspondences in individuals with and without dyslexia. Additionally, we investigated the relation between grapheme-phoneme learning and measures of phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge and rapid automatized naming, with a focus on the unique joint variance of grapheme-phoneme learning to word and non-word reading achievement. Training of grapheme-phoneme associations consisted of a 20-min training program in which eight novel letters (Hebrew) needed to be paired with speech sounds taken from the participant's (...) native language (Dutch). Eighty-four third grade students, of whom 20 were diagnosed with dyslexia, participated in the training and testing. Our results indicate a reduced ability of dyslexic readers in applying newly learned grapheme-phoneme correspondences while reading words which consist of these novel letters. However, we did not observe a significant independent contribution of grapheme-phoneme learning to reading outcomes. Alternatively, results from the regression analysis indicate that failure to read may be due to differences in phonological and/or orthographic knowledge but not to differences in the grapheme-phoneme-conversion process itself. (shrink)

This article discusses some orthographical questions which relate to the text of Sophocles. It pays special attention to the editor’s duty to present the evidence for ancient orthography accurately, consistently, and efficiently.

A connectionist approach to word reading, based on the principles of distributed representation, graded learning of statistical structure, and interactivity in processing, has led to the development of explicit computational models which account for a wide range of data on normal skilled reading and on patterns of reading impairment due to brain damage. There have, however, been recent empirical challenges to these models, and the approach in general, relating to the influence of orthographic length on the naming latencies of (...) both normal and dyslexic readers. The current work presents a simulation which generates sequential phonological output in response to written input, and which can refixate the input when encountering difficulty. The normal model reads both words and nonwords accurately, and exhibits an effect of orthographic length and a frequency‐by‐consistency interaction in its naming latencies. When subject to peripheral damage, the model exhibits an increased length effect that interacts with word frequency, characteristic of letter‐by‐letter reading in pure alexia. Although the model is far from a fully adequate account of all the relevant phenomena, it suggests how connectionist models may be extended to provide deeper insight into sequential processes in reading. (shrink)

In the last decade, reading research has seen a paradigmatic shift. A new wave of computational models of orthographic processing that offer various forms of noisy position or context-sensitive coding have revolutionized the field of visual word recognition. The influx of such models stems mainly from consistent findings, coming mostly from European languages, regarding an apparent insensitivity of skilled readers to letter order. Underlying the current revolution is the theoretical assumption that the insensitivity of readers to letter order reflects (...) the special way in which the human brain encodes the position of letters in printed words. The present article discusses the theoretical shortcomings and misconceptions of this approach to visual word recognition. A systematic review of data obtained from a variety of languages demonstrates that letter-order insensitivity is neither a general property of the cognitive system nor a property of the brain in encoding letters. Rather, it is a variant and idiosyncratic characteristic of some languages, mostly European, reflecting a strategy of optimizing encoding resources, given the specific structure of words. Since the main goal of reading research is to develop theories that describe the fundamental and invariant phenomena of reading across orthographies, an alternative approach to model visual word recognition is offered. The dimensions of a possible universal model of reading, which outlines the common cognitive operations involved in orthographic processing in all writing systems, are discussed. (shrink)

A critical prediction of the E-Z Reader model is that experimental manipulations that disrupt early encoding of visual and orthographic features of the fixated word without affecting subsequent lexical processing should influence the processing difficulty of the fixated word without affecting the processing of the next word. We tested this prediction by monitoring participants’ eye movements while they read sentences in which a target word was presented either normally or altered. In the critical condition, the contrast between the target (...) word and the background was substantially reduced. Such a reduction in stimulus quality is typically assumed to have an impact that is largely confined to a very early stage of word recognition. Results were consistent with the E-Z Reader model: This faint presentation had a robust influence on the duration of fixations on the target word without substantially altering the processing of the next word. (shrink)

In the typical single-stimulus perceptual identification task, accuracy is improved by prior study of test words, a repetition priming benefit. There is also a cost, inasmuch as previously studied words are likely to be produced as responses if the test word is orthographically similar but not identical to a studied word. In two-alternative forced-choice perceptual identification, a test word is flashed and followed by two alternatives, one of which is the correct response. When the two alternatives are orthographically similar, test (...) words identical to previously studied items are identified more accurately than new words but tests words orthographically similar to studied words are identified less accurately than new words . Ratcliff and McKoon argue that these are bias effects that arise in the decision stage of word identification. We report five experiments that examined the alternative hypothesis that these bias effects arise from postperceptual guessing strategies. In single-stimulus perceptual identification, repetition priming benefits were equally great for young and older adults who claimed to use deliberate guessing strategies and those who did not . In contrast, only groups of young and older people who claimed to deliberately guess studied words in a two-alternative forced-choice task showed reliable benefits and costs. Costs and benefits were abolished in the two-alternative forced-choice task when a very long study list was used, presumably because the increased retrieval burden made the use of deliberate guessing strategies less attractive . Under conditions similar to those of Experiment 3, repetition priming was observed in single-stimulus perceptual identification . These results are consistent with the view that costs and benefits in the forced-choice perceptual identification task arise from deliberate guessing strategies but that those in the single-stimulus task do not. The possibility that the observed relationship between strategy reports and priming effects reflects erroneous postexperimental assessments of strategies by participants is also considered. (shrink)

Collecting human similarity judgments is instrumental to measuring and modeling neurocognitive representations and has been made more efficient by the multi-arrangement task. While this task has been tested for collecting semantic similarity judgments, it is unclear whether it also lends itself to phonological and orthographic similarity judgments of words. We have extended the task to include these lexical modalities and compared the results between modalities and against computational models. We find that similarity judgments can be collected for all three (...) modalities, although word forms were considered more difficult to sort and resulted in less consistent inter- and intra-rater agreement than semantics. For all three modalities we can construct stable group-level representational similarity matrices. However, these do not capture significant idiosyncratic similarity information unique to each participant. We discuss the potential underlying causes for differences between modalities and their effect on the application of the multi-arrangement task. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the performance of baseline hidden Markov model (HMM) for segmentation of speech signals. It is applied on single-speaker segmentation task, using Hindi speech database. The automatic phoneme segmentation framework evolved imitates the human phoneme segmentation process. A set of 44 Hindi phonemes were chosen for the segmentation experiment, wherein we used continuous density hidden Markov model (CDHMM) with a mixture of Gaussian distribution. The left-to-right topology with no skip states has been selected as it is (...) effective in speech recognition due to its consistency with the natural way of articulating the spoken words. This system accepts speech utterances along with their orthographic “transcriptions” and generates segmentation information of the speech. This corpus was used to develop context-independent hidden Markov models (HMMs) for each of the Hindi phonemes. The system was trained using numerous sentences that are relevant to provide information to the passengers of the Metro Rail. The system was validated against a few manually segmented speech utterances. The evaluation of the experiments shows that the best performance is obtained by using a combination of two Gaussians mixtures and five HMM states. A category-wise phoneme error analysis has been performed, and the performance of the phonetic segmentation has been reported. The modeling of HMMs has been implemented using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (C++), and the system is designed to work on Windows operating system. The goal of this study is automatic segmentation of speech at phonetic level. (shrink)

Les dictionnaires d’associations évoquées par les mots sont créés à partir de la collecte des réactions données à un stimulus lexical. La plupart de ces réactions s’explique par des relations logiques basées sur le sens du stimulus proposé. Cependant une certaine quantité de ces réactions est provoquée par la forme de ce lexème, et procède du désir du participant à l’expérience de jouer avec les mots. Nous analyserons ici cette catégorie de réactions pour en proposer une typologie : le jeu (...) peut consister en un simple écho du stimulus, soit c’est l’association des deux qui est ludique. Nous analysons les cas douteux, qui peuvent être dus à une lecture erronée du stimulus ou une orthographe douteuse de la réaction, et discuterons du bien-fondé de la prise en compte des jeux de mots dans le dictionnaire d’associations, dont le principe est d’être formé de réactions spontanées au stimulus, tandis qu’un jeu de mot suppose une réflexion, si courte soit-elle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Re-editing the RepublicMalcolm SchofieldS. R. Slings, ed. Platonis Respublica. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. xxiv + 428 pp. Cloth, $45.S. R. Slings' Republic is the second volume to appear in the new OCT edition of Plato. Reviewing the first—the new volume I, containing the first two tetralogies—Slings rounded off with some general remarks for the "average user of OCTs," who "will want to know to what degree (...) all this work has improved the text" (Mnemosyne 51 [1998] 101). If we apply the question to the fruits of his own tireless labours (the last of his seven general editorial principles is: editori non est fatiscendum), the answer is the same verdict as Slings passed on volume I: "The text is not all that different from Burnet's, and rightly so," for "he was a superb editor with a feeling for Platonic Greek that is unlikely to be ever surpassed" (ibid. 93). But did you know something Slings reports elsewhere (Mnem. 42 [1989] 192): that "when the volumes of Burnet's Platonis Opera first appeared, they were generally considered a provisional editio minor, soon to be superseded by more impressive tomes?" What is hugely improved is the apparatus criticus. There are two main reasons for this.First, Slings' text is based on a much more secure assessment of the textual tradition than was Burnet's, thanks not least to the comprehensive work of his former pupil Gerard Boter in The Textual Tradition of Plato's Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1989). Burnet gave pride of place to three primary witnesses: Parisinus 1807, ninth century (A); Marcianus 185, twelfth century (D); and Vindobonensis suppl. gr., dated by Slings to the period 1250-1325 (F). But he reported them selectively and sometimes inaccurately and never collated any of them himself. Moreover, while he was the first editor to recognise the true importance of the Vindobonensis, in Slings' opinion he accorded it more authority, particularly relative to the Parisinus, than it really carries. Finally, Burnet attached some weight to M, a manuscript in the library of the Malatestas at Cesena variously attributed to the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries (but considered fifteenth century by Slings and Boter) and collated for the Republic by Lewis Campbell. Boter's investigations have established that M carries no independent authority. Slings and Boter have reexamined all three of the primary medieval manuscripts both in photocopies and in situ, with what was evidently extreme care, and Slings says he has no doubt that the readings reported in the new OCT are a lot more reliable than in any previous edition. His general view of the [End Page 607] merits and demerits of A, D, and F—repeated here—was already set out in Appendix 2 to his major edition of the Clitophon (which precedes the Republic in the seventh tetralogy and shares its textual tradition); see Plato: Clitophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 340-44. Roughly speaking, A is the weightiest, D is of relatively minor importance, and F is "a typical representative of the cheap Plato omnibus as found in later antiquity," with "many uniquely true readings" but lots of errors and "untrustworthy variants in word order and particles" (ibid. 341).Second, as well as exploiting Plato papyri and translations into Coptic, Arabic, and Hebrew, Slings makes more generous use of the indirect tradition than do earlier editions by using quotations and allusions in subsequent ancient authors and scholia. He thanks a number of other Dutch scholars for their help in compiling this material and cites in particular Gerard Boter's index of testimonia in The Textual Tradition. Slings includes a list of those cited in his apparatus criticus as an appendix (it runs to seventeen pages). Moreover, interpretation of the information provided in the apparatus is aided by the clear explanation in the editor's pithy Latin preface of the rules and the orthographic practices he proposes to follow. In general, while Slings' apparatus is not consistently bulkier than Burnet's, it is often richer. Mostly this is thanks to better information about the textual tradition. But in line with the usual modern practice, Slings also gives the source of any Platonic quotation... (shrink)

Symbolic representation acquisition is the complex cognitive process consisting of learning to use a symbol to stand for something else. A variety of non-human animals can engage in symbolic representation learning. One particularly complex form of symbol representation is the associations between orthographic symbols and speech sounds, known as grapheme–phoneme correspondence. To date, there has been little evidence that animals can learn this form of symbolic representation. Here, we evaluated whether an Umbrella cockatoo (Cacatua alba) can learn letter-speech correspondence (...) using English words. The bird-participant was trained with phonics instruction and then tested on pairs of index cards while the experimenter spoke the word. The words were unknown to the bird and the experimenter was blinded to the correct card position. The cockatoo’s accuracy (M = 71%) was statistically significant. Further, we found a strong correlation between the bird’s word-identification success and the number of overlapping letters between words, where the more overlapping letters between words, the more likely the cockatoo answered incorrectly. Our results strongly suggest that parrots may have the ability to learn grapheme–phoneme correspondences. (shrink)

Recent neuroimaging studies of language processing are examining the neural substrate of phonology because of its critical role in mapping sound information onto higher levels of language processing (e.g., words) as well as providing codes in which verbal information can be temporarily stored in working memory. However, the precise role of the inferior frontal cortex in spoken and written phonological tasks has remained elusive. Although lesion studies have indicated the presence of selective deficits in phonological processing, the location of lesions (...) underlying these impairments has not revealed a consistent pattern. Despite efforts to refine methods and tasks, functional neuroimaging studies have also revealed variability in activation patterns. Reanalysis of evidence from these neuroimaging studies suggests that there are functional subregions within the inferior frontal gyrus that correspond to specific components of phonological processing (e.g., orthographic to phonological conversion in reading, and segmentation in speech). (shrink)

Previous studies provided evidence for a connection between language processing and language change. We add to these studies with an exploration of the influence of lexical-distributional properties of words in orthographic space, semantic space, and the mapping between orthographic and semantic space on the probability of lexical extinction. Through a binomial linear regression analysis, we investigated the probability of lexical extinction by the first decade of the twenty-first century (2000s) for words that existed in the first decade of (...) the nineteenth-century (1800s) in eight data sets for five languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The binomial linear regression analysis revealed that words that are more similar in form to other words are less likely to disappear from a language. By contrast, words that are more similar in meaning to other words are more likely to become extinct. In addition, a more consistent mapping between form and meaning protects a word from lexical extinction. A nonlinear time-to-event analysis furthermore revealed that the position of a word in orthographic and semantic space continues to influence the probability of it disappearing from a language for at least 200 years. Effects of the lexical-distributional properties of words under investigation here have been reported in the language processing literature as well. The results reported here, therefore, fit well with a usage-based approach to language change, which holds that language change is at least to some extent connected to cognitive mechanisms in the human brain. (shrink)

Background Analysis of aphasic narratives can be a challenge for clinicians. Previous studies have mainly employed measures that categorized speech samples at the word level. They included quantification of the use and misuse of different word classes, presence and absence of narrative contents and errors, paraphasias, and perseverations, as well as morphological structures and errors within a narrative. In other words, a great amount of research has been conducted in the aphasiology literature focusing on micro-linguistic structures of oral narratives. Aspects (...) of macro- linguistic structures, such as the analysis of content information by a speaker, consistency of using cohesive devices to present information within a narrative, and order of presenting information necessary to form a coherent discourse, have not been extensively investigated. The current investigation proposes a clinical analytic system to target three aspects of macro-linguistic structures in narratives among speakers with aphasia. Specifically, (1) the presence of search events (i.e., the mentioning of key events that allow the listener to understand; Capilouto, Wright, &Wagovich, 2006) within a narrative, (2) the sequence of the mentioned events, and (3) the informativeness (i.e., the fulfillment of lexical items that allow the user to understand what the event is detailing) of the event contents, were focused in the proposed framework. Method Ten controls transcripts from were selected from the AphasiaBank (MacWhinney, Fromm, Forbes, & Holland, 2011). Three narrative tasks, including sequential picture description of ‘Refused Umbrella’, procedural narrative of making a ‘Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich’, and telling of ‘Cinderella’ story, were used to establish normative data for the basis of analysis. Specifically, the Search Events (e) and Informative Words (i) used by at least 70% of the speakers were listed for each genre. The sequential order of mentioning the Search Events, i.e., common order of events in 90% of the speakers, (s.total) was determined. Twelve speakers with aphasia (nine fluent and three non-fluent) were recruited and administered the Western Aphasia Battery and Object and Action Naming Battery. Their performance in the above three discourse tasks were orthographically transcribed and analyzed using the following measures: e.total, e.matched with norm, e.missed, e.irrlevant, e.extra, s.total, i.pb&j, i.umbr, i.cind, and i.total. Three samples were randomly chosen to be re-analyzed for inter- and intra-rater reliability. Results Results of an independent t-test suggested significant differences between the fluent and non-fluent subjects in sequential order of Search Events for all genres (s.total) and i.total, suggesting sensitivity of this framework to differentiate between the two fluency groups. Results of Pearson product-moment correlations revealed significant relation between Informative Words and WAB spontaneous speech scores, AQ, as well as OAB scores, for both aphasic groups. The mean value of coefficients for intra-rater reliability (0.992), with significant correlations on e.match, e.miss, and e.extra, was higher than that of inter-rater reliability (0.897). Discussion Based on our preliminary results, this objective framework allowed clinical evaluation of impairment in macro-linguistic structures present in aphasic discourse. Further extension should involve more subjects encompassing a wider range of severity with different types of aphasia. (shrink)

A neurally plausible model of how the process of visually perceiving a letter in the context of a word is learned, and how such processing occurs in adults is proposed. The model consists of a collection of abstract letter feature detector neurons and their interconnections. The model also includes a learning rule that specifies how these interconnections evolve with experience. The interconnections between neurons can be interpreted as representing the spatially redundant, sequentially redundant, and transgraphemic information in letter string displays. (...) Anderson, Silverstein, Ritz, and Jones's (1977) “Brain‐State‐in‐a‐Box” (BSB) neural mechanism is then used to implement the proposed model. The resulting system makes explicit qualitative predictions using both letter recognition accuracy and reaction time as dependent measures. In particular, the model offers an integrated explanation of some experiments involving manipulations of orthographic regularity, masking, case alternations, and experience with words. The similarities and differences between the model and models proposed by Adams (1979) and McClelland and Rumelhart (1981) are also discussed. (shrink)

An Introduction to Proof Theory provides an accessible introduction to the theory of proofs, with details of proofs worked out and examples and exercises to aid the reader's understanding. It also serves as a companion to reading the original pathbreaking articles by Gerhard Gentzen. The first half covers topics in structural proof theory, including the Gödel-Gentzen translation of classical into intuitionistic logic, natural deduction and the normalization theorems, the sequent calculus, including cut-elimination and mid-sequent theorems, and various applications of these (...) results. The second half examines ordinal proof theory, specifically Gentzen's consistency proof for first-order Peano Arithmetic. The theory of ordinal notations and other elements of ordinal theory are developed from scratch, and no knowledge of set theory is presumed. The proof methods needed to establish proof-theoretic results, especially proof by induction, are introduced in stages throughout the text. Mancosu, Galvan, and Zach's introduction will provide a solid foundation for those looking to understand this central area of mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Niko Kolodny It is often said that there is a special class of norms, ‘rational requirements’, that demand that our attitudes be related one another in certain ways, whatever else may be the case.1 In recent work, a special class of these rational requirements has attracted particular attention: what I will call ‘requirements of formal coherence as such’, which require just that our attitudes be formally coherent.2 For example, we are rationally required, if we believe something, to believe what it (...) entails. And we are rationally required, if we intend an end, to intend what we take to be necessary means to it. The intuitive idea is that formally incoherent attitudes give rise to a certain normative tension, or exert a kind of rational pressure on each another, and this tension, or pressure, is relieved just when one of the attitudes is revised. As John Broome observes, these requirements are, by their nature, ‘wide scope’, which is to say that there is no particular attitude that one must have or lack in order to satisfy them. This is because they require just formal coherence, and there is no particular attitude that one must have or lack in order to be formally coherent. (shrink)

The principle of maximum entropy is a general method to assign values to probability distributions on the basis of partial information. This principle, introduced by Jaynes in 1957, forms an extension of the classical principle of insufficient reason. It has been further generalized, both in mathematical formulation and in intended scope, into the principle of maximum relative entropy or of minimum information. It has been claimed that these principles are singled out as unique methods of statistical inference that agree with (...) certain compelling consistency requirements. This paper reviews these consistency arguments and the surrounding controversy. It is shown that the uniqueness proofs are flawed, or rest on unreasonably strong assumptions. A more general class of inference rules, maximizing the so-called Re[acute ]nyi entropies, is exhibited which also fulfill the reasonable part of the consistency assumptions. (shrink)

Summary The article substantiates the possibility and meaningfulness of a coherent theoretical system for psychotherapy, as it is strived for in Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy and presented in several articles in this issue of the journal "Gestalt Theory". The necessity of consistency in the theoretical assumptions and concepts of a psychotherapy method is not derived from scientific considerations alone, but already arises from the elementary role of consistency in human life. This also results in the requirements for the (...) class='Hi'>consistency of theoretical foundations of psychotherapy. It is not fulfilled in a mere internal, logical consistency of its models, but only in the actual fitting together with the critical-phenomenal and naive-phenomenal worlds of the therapists and their clients in the reality test of life. (shrink)

In positive theories, we have an axiom scheme of comprehension for positive formulas. We study here the “generalized positive” theory GPK∞+. Natural models of this theory are hyperuniverses. The author has shown in [2] that GPK∞+ interprets the Kelley Morse class theory. Here we prove that GPK∞+ + ACWF and the Kelley-Morse class theory with the axiom of global choice and the axiom “On is ramifiable” are mutually interpretable. This shows that GPK∞+ + ACWF is a “strong” theory since “On (...) is ramifiable” implies the existence of a proper class of inaccessible cardinals. (shrink)

It might be thought that we could argue for the consistency of a mathematical theory T within T, by giving an inductive argument that all theorems of T are true and inferring consistency. By Gödel's second incompleteness theorem any such argument must break down, but just how it breaks down depends on the kind of theory of truth that is built into T. The paper surveys the possibilities, and suggests that some theories of truth give far more intuitive (...) diagnoses of the breakdown than do others. The paper concludes with some morals about the nature of validity and about a possible alternative to the idea that mathematical theories are indefinitely extensible. (shrink)

In *Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy*, Don Garrett argues for the coherence of Hume's philosophy when it is viewed as work in cognitive psychology. Without denying this, I argue that there is more to Hume's standpoint than cognitive psychology. Specifically, Hume's standpoint shifts as the level of inquiry changes. A descriptive cognitive psychology is one standpoint that he occupies. However, he occupies other standpoints as well: the commonsense standpoint of the vulgar is one; the radical doubt of the skeptic (...) is another. Such a radical perspectivism is central to Hume's writings. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that mere temporal proximity always and without exception strengthens certain moral duties, including the duty to save – call this view Robust Temporalism. Although almost all other moral philosophers dismiss Robust Temporalism out of hand, I argue that it is prima facie intuitively plausible, and that it is analogous to a view about special obligations that many philosophers already accept. I also defend Robust Temporalism against several common objections, and I highlight its relevance to a (...) number of practical policy debates, including longtermism. My conclusion is that Robust Temporalism is a moral live option, that deserves to be taken much more seriously in the future. (shrink)

It is shown that the constructive four-valued logic N4 can be faithfully embedded into the modal logic S4. This embedding is used to obtain complete, cut-free display sequent calculi for N4 and C4, the modal logic of consistency over N4. C4 is a natural monotonic base system for semantics-based non-monotonic reasoning.

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

A moral dilemma is a situation in which an agent ought to do each of two actions, Both of which he cannot do. If there are genuine moral dilemmas, The ethical theorist is presented with a problem: he must reject several very plausible principles of standard deontic logic. The main reasons usually given to show that there are moral dilemmas are examined, And it is argued that they are not sufficient. Several positive arguments are then presented, Arguments which try to (...) show that an adequate moral theory must rule out the possibility of genuine dilemmas. (shrink)

The 1-consistency of arithmetic is shown to be equivalent to the existence of fixed points of a certain type of update procedure, which is implicit in the epsilon-substitution method.

We consider the problem about the length of proofs of the sentences $\operatorname{Con}_S(\underline{n})$ saying that there is no proof of contradiction in S whose length is ≤ n. We show the relation of this problem to some problems about propositional proof systems.

Branching theories are popular frameworks for modeling objective indeterminism in the form of a future of open possibilities. In such theories, the notion of a history plays a crucial role: it is both a basic ingredient in the axiomatic definition of the framework, and it is used as a parameter of truth in semantics for languages with a future tense. Furthermore, histories—complete possible courses of events—ground the notion of modal consistency: a set of events is modally consistent iff there (...) is a history containing that set. We will explain these roles of histories and highlight some critical aspects having to do with the fact that histories are global and, in a relevant sense, “big” objects. The notion of modal consistency, on the other hand, has both local and global aspects. We ask in how far a local notion of modal consistency can serve as an alternative to the common uses of histories, and work out two recent approaches to alternatives to histories. Combining these approaches, we develop a novel semantics for branching time. (shrink)