What is a Glimk?

1. What is a Glimk? Memory consolidation and the integration of new words into existing categories Felix Clay

2. Learning in the lab • Dagenbach et al (1990) • No immediate priming effect on lexical decision task after a single association period for • familiar words (day: woman) • unfamiliar words associated with synonyms (codex: book) • Significant priming for unfamiliar words after extensive and varied 5 week practice period • BUT not for familiar words • Pecher and Raajimakers (1999) • Showed associative priming effects over much shorter period

3. Picture-word interference as a measure of semantic relationships • Picture-word interference (PWI) • Compare speed of naming same picture with distractors from same category to those from different category • Categorical rather than associative (camel: DESERT) Matching PWI with a learning task we can look at processes of memory integration without having to test newly learnt words directly • How quickly does semantic interference for completely novel items arise? APPLE TRAIN ????

4. Study 1 • Tested PWI effects with new-word/ existing-word distractors • before study phase • after study phase • 12 new-words learnt in 3 categories • Study task involved matching words to categories • 16 word-to-category matching tasks for each word • Feedback: Each new-word associated with 2 adjectives

5. * * * * p<0.01 p<0.05 * * *

6. Summary of Study 1 • Standard PWI effect seen with normal words both before and after • PWI effect for new-words after study phase • Weaknesses • No data on temporal scale of effect • Unrealistic learning task

7. Study 2 • To replicate findings of Study 1 • Investigation into the stability of results over time • Investigation into specificity of access to new representations • Is access to new memories general or specific? CASE effect? • Semantic memory is usually assumed to be abstract • But evidence of context specificity in memory for new words • Pecher and Raajimakers (1999) looked at specificity of learning by giving participants different tasks on study and test. Found priming effects not to generalise

8. dimpled sour fruit warm mens clothing fast water vehicle Materials 9 pictures from 3 categories named for each category3 word/ non-word distractors Novel picture and description created for each non-word clothes vehicles fruit dasim cobor brish

9. Procedure • Study phase: • Participants match picture/ description to words in UPPERcase(12*each picture/ description , 6 correct, 6 incorrect) • Test phases: • PWI task: Contains distractors in UPPER and lowercases • Recall task: participants shown descriptions/ pictures and asked to try and remember names.

10. Correct this type of fruit is called a BRISH GAMP

11. dimpled, sour fruit a BRISH is a type of dimpled, sour fruit Correct BRISH

12. * * * * * * p<0.01 p<0.05 * case effect

13. * * * * * * p<0.01 p<0.05 * case effect *

14. * * * * * * p<0.01 p<0.05 * case effect *

15. * * * * / * p<0.01 p<0.05 * Summary of Study 2 • Standard PWI effects significant throughout • PWI for new associations extends over a week • Specificity of presentation seems to matter • UPPER case: Significant effect of study phase on new-word PWI compared to to existing-word PWI • lower case: No significant effects • Strength of PWI not related to measures of explicit memory • No significant correlation between strength of non-word PWI and recall after a week (r= .09, n.s.) or errors during training (r= -.05, n.s.) • Significant correlation between recall after a week and errors during training (r= .35, ) * *

16. Overall Summary • PWI effect for new words is stable both immediately and after a week • This finding is in contrast to earlier work which suggested extended practice is necessary for words to be integrated with semantic memory • These studies also assumed that semantic memory develops out of repeated experiences with associated words • Case-specific PWI? (work in progress!) • Congruent with Pecher and Raajimaker (1999) findings of context specificity for newly learnt semantic memories • Iconic learning? (c.f. FBI, SAFEWAY, Gontijo, Shillcock and Kelly, 1997)

17. Implications • Evidence against consolidation theories of semantic memory? • These would predict no initial PWI effect for new words as these are initially held in episodic memory and are only fully integrated into semantic memory over time • More coherent with other theories?

18. The bottom line! • Learning about new items is not simply a process of abstracting from multiple experiences over time. • Semantic memory shows immediate sensitivity to (specific instantiations of?) new items

19. Questions/ Ideas? Thanks to Jeff Bowers and Marcus Damian for help throughout

20. Case->Context specificity effects • Effect of experiencing words only in particular situations, handwriting etc • Longer term study to try and get generalised learning effect • In real-life context maybe? • Effects of interference on different measures of memory • Role of episodic factors in helping to structure memory? • Category/ item relationship effects on learning • Category density/ size, item prototypicality etc

21. Context specificity? “Semantic memory may not consist of abstract information that is retrieved whenever a word is activated, but rather it seems to be more flexible. Storage and retrieval of information from semantic memory is dependent on the context in which a word is encountered“ • Episodic vs. Iconic semantic effects? Value of labelling things: allows generalization from specific stimuli. Initially however useful to have quick learning system for specifics. • Other studies have also shown that both • the present context (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1995) ICONIC SEMANTIC? • and recent experiences with words (Pecher et al., 1998) ABSTRACT EPISODIC? affect what aspects of a word’s meaning are activated at a certain moment. • Raw naming latency shows 10 msec average decrease in picture naming times after a week • BUT! all lower-case non-words higher! Iconic semantic vs. abstract episodic effects? Not clear!

22. Control Study • Effects not attributable to simply associating new words to categories • Control task with category level distractors showed insignificant trend towards facilitation (776 vs. 779 msecs, c.f. Vitkovitch and Tyrell, 1999)

23. brish gamp dasim jork clothes fruit counterbalancing koof hulen plock cobor vehicles slib

24. Design summary Main dependant variable: Picture naming latency 2 old, 2 new factors looked at, all within subjects. Relation of distractor to picture (same/ different category) Distractor type (word/ non-word) Time after study phase (before/ immediately after/ one week after) Distractor case (UPPER/ lower)