An examination of syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations using behavioral and electrophysiological measures of priming tasks.
Item
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Title
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An examination of syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations using behavioral and electrophysiological measures of priming tasks.
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Identifier
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AAI9510666
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identifier
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9510666
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Creator
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Gomes, Hilary Thompson.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Jeffrey J. Rosen
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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Free association tasks have revealed a developmental shift from syntagmatic to paradigmatic responding (Entwisle, 1966; Nelson, 1977). Children tend to generate syntagmatic responses (e.g., "dog"--"bark") while adults generally produce paradigmatic responses (e.g., "dog"--"cat"). Word associations are thought to reflect semantic organization so this change in response behavior has been interpreted as a semantic reorganization.;These experiments examined adult syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations using behavioral priming and electrophysiological (N400) measures. It was hypothesized that both types of associations would be evident but that paradigmatic associations would be stronger explaining the adult paradigmatic response bias in word associations.;Experiments 1-5 were methodological studies designed to determine optimal experimental parameters for examining these hypotheses. Experiments 6-9 addressed theoretical issues. Experiment 6, a lexical decision study, compared behavioral priming and its generality across prime/target association type (syntagmatic and paradigmatic), grammatical class of the prime (noun and adjective), presentation modality (visual and auditory) and SOA (650 and 1150 msec). Priming was significant for all comparisons, except the visual noun paradigmatic (both SOAs) and the visual adjective syntagmatic conditions (1150 SOA). Unexpectedly, there was not a main effect of association type but an interaction of association type and grammatical class. Experiments 8 and 9 attempted to generalize these finding across SOA and word order. Their results generally supported and replicated those of Experiment 6.;Experiment 7, a word probe study, examined N400 effects. The N400 effect was compared across association type, grammatical class and modality. Significant N400 effects were found for all conditions, except auditory adjective paradigmatic. No differences were found due to grammatical class or association type, and, unlike Experiment 6, no interaction was found.;The behavioral and N400 results were then compared and their implications for adult and developmental models of semantic organization were discussed.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
