Three-step priming in lexical decision
The main objective that the article seeks to attain is to evaluate the compound cue Model of Ratcliff and McKoon as well as the distributed memory model of Masson. Apparently, the article primarily dwells on the concept of automatic priming and as a result, a comprehensive evaluation of the above models will be attained by carrying out a test for mediated priming, which essentially refers to the priming of the target words which are perceived to be indirectly related to the semantic memory.
Every research work conducted seeks to fill a niche that was left by previous research studies. This study was motivated by research conducted by McNamara and Altarriba in 1988 and Chwilla, Kolk, and Mulder (2000) all of whom conducted research on the same topic. The research conducted by McNamara and Altarriba (1988) noted that the presence of direct associates was one of the main reasons why mediated priming was inherently absent. In addition to that, they were able to clearly demonstrate two-step priming using concrete and substantial evidence. On the other hand, the research by Chwilla, Kolk, and Mulder in 2000 questioned the hypothesis, which indicated that list composition was a crucial component in attaining two-step priming. The findings in both of these studies left some questions on the topic of three-step priming unaddressed which eventually motivated this study.[unique_solution]
As noted in the first paragraph, an evaluation is to be conducted between the two models. In order to attain reliable results, a researcher has to formulate a research question that seeks to be answered by the findings of the study or else formulate a set of hypothesis that they will test using the results of the study. For this article, the researcher stated a hypothesis which argued that if the mediated pairs were to be direct, despite of the fact that they are weak and are related semantically, then this would automatically imply that the compound cue model was responsible for such effects.
In order to test for the above hypothesis, the researcher conducted two experiments. In the experiments, 30 participants were chosen but two were not included in the analyses due to some discrepancies. The procedure involved having the participants sit in a sound-attenuating chamber and a response device was put before each of the participants in order to keep track of the stimuli. There was the pure list that comprised of 100 two-step pairs and the mixed list that was composed of 49 one-step pairs. To avoid any possible relationships between the two, the pure list always came before the mixed one. In order to collect data for this study, the participants indicated the presence of a word by pressing a button with their dominant index finger and for the other strings, which were not words, they pressed using the other index finger.
No need to elaborate this much on the content of the methodology. Reduce this signficantly.
The results of the experiment show that a two-step priming occurred in the double lexical decision task. In addition to that, it was also found out that the use of different strategies was not determined by the list composition. It was also evident that two-step priming was larger than one-step and this form of decay in priming was consistent with spreading activation models and it was also common for three-step priming. However, it was noted that the two models that were to be evaluated could not account for the presence or absence of the list composition. This implies that the hypothesis stated was not supported by the results of the experiment.
The authors are of the opinion that the current evidence that the above models can attribute for three-step priming is quite new and is not in agreement with the traditional perception that mediated priming gives adequate support on the idea of spreading activation models. In my opinion, three-step priming is still a concept that has not been highly researched on and as a result, the findings from the studies cannot be completely relied upon because there is still need for further research. Despite of the fact that this study is not comprehensive, it provides useful insights into a field that has not been widely researched. One of the major weaknesses of this study was on the sample size. The sample size should be chosen in such way that will adequately represent the characteristics of the entire population. Sample sizes of 100 and 49 are quite small and the results from such a sample are not very reliable representative of the larger population. However, the study was able to provide insights into a field that has been least explored and the methodology used in the experiment is very reliable.
The two articles need to be discussed in a collective voice and hence integrated and made relatable under the topic of Lexical processing. You should not separate the two as you have done here.
A Diffusion Model Analysis of the Effects of Aging in the Lexical-Decision Task
Task by Ratcliff, Thapar, Gomez and McKoon is the article I am reviewing. The main purpose of the study is to investigate the difference in lexical decision performance between older subjects (age 60-75) with younger, college-level students. The diffusion model is applied in this article to compare lexical-decision performance for older participants from 60-75 years and college-age students. Lexical decision is one task that is important in this study to demonstrate that performance and lexical-decision response would improve and increase with age.
Cognitive tasks prove that processing decelerates with age and that triggered this study. Another study by Allen, Madden, and Crozier (1991) found average RTs of 800 ms for older adults in comparison to 500 ms for younger participants. Longer RTs with lower frequency words are larger for older adults than younger ones. Also a different study compared lexical-decision performance correctness between aphasic patients and normal control participants led to large RT differences between the two groups. What has also been discovered in earlier studies is that older subjects have longer RTs, and that is possibly because of their slower indecision processing and because of additional conventional decisions that they have over young subjects.
The hypothesis the authors state is very clear if word frequency and type of nonword has an influence only on the rates of collection of evidence, then older participants would possibly have larger rates of accumulation of evidence than young participants, because of their countless years of knowledge with words, and so the hypothesis was examined by 2 experiments using a standard lexical-decision technique. There were many trials and for each one, an individual letter string was introduced and it was the participants’ choice to decide if what is presented a word or a nonword. Experiment one included 54 young college students (36 women and 18 men), who participated for credit in an introductory Psychology course at Northwestern University, and 44 healthy, active, community- dwelling older adults (27 women and 17 men). For experiment two, there were 54 different young adults to the ones in experiment 1. (38 women and 16 men), and 40 different older adults (26 women and 14 men). The adults were paid 15 dollars for their participation for a one–hour session in both experiments, but they had to score no less than 26 on the Mini Mental State Examination, and a score of no more than 15 on the Center for Epidemiological Studies -Depression Scale. As well as having no evidence of cognitive impairment or psychiatric disease. As for the younger participants, as mentioned earlier, are given course credits in their introductory psychology course. The participants were presented with high-frequency words: 800 words with frequencies from 78 to 10,600 per million, low-frequency words: 800 words with frequencies of 4 and 5 per million, and very low-frequency words: 741 words with frequencies of 1 per million or no occurrence in the Kucera and Francis’s corpus. Stimuli were showcased on a Pentium II class machine, and the responses were gathered on the keyboard. A practice and an experimental session were held. 30 blocks each with 30 lexical-decision trials with about half an hour for the practice session, and 70 blocks of 30 lexical-decision trials about 50 minutes for the experimental session. The participants rested between each block of trials, which included 5 high-, 5 low-, and 5 very low-frequency words and 15 nonwords, which were presented on the PC screen. The participants selected the / key for a word and the z key for a nonword. If they get the correct response, a 150-ms pause will happen and then begins the next trial, however, if the participants get the wrong response, the word ERROR will show up for 750ms, then will be erased and the next trial will occur.
Again you’re far too unnecessarily descriptive in your discussion on the methodology. This should be restricted as seen in the published literature which you were instructed to emulate.
The results were that high-frequency words had shorter RTs and higher accuracy than low-frequency words, which had shorter RTs and higher frequency than very low-frequency words. Nonwords accuracy was higher and RTs were shorter when the nonwords were random letter strings, just like in experiment 2 than when they were pseudo words in experiment 1. Older participants correct RTs to words were longer by 150 to 300ms and their correct RTs to nonwords were longer by 150 to 250ms. This answers the hypothesis that older participants are slower than the college students, and the accuracy of older subjects are better than younger subjects, because the young college students’ error rates were twice as large as the ones made by older subjects. There was also difference in speed-accuracy relationship between young and older participants. The young participants’ responses for the least accurate were faster than their responses for the most accurate. As for the older participants, the fastest were no less accurate than the slowest, excluding 2 participants. This shows that younger participants are likely to prefer speed to accuracy than older participants. From the diffusion model, the results show that the nondecision component of RT was 80-100 ms longer for the older participants and they also adopted higher, more conservative decision criteria settings. It is implied that the older participants might not be able to increase their speed and respond quickly even when asked to do so. Another finding is that drift rates that measure the quality of the match between a test string of letters and lexical memory was about the same for older and younger participants, despite the years of experience that the older people have and large differences in accuracy. From all the experiments, it was shown how the components of processing by the diffusion model work together to explain data. The quantile probability plots in the experiments of this study show that the model fit the data well, involving the right slant tails of the RT allocations and the distributional changed across experimental situations. The shape of the RT distributions in the experiments stayed almost constant. All in all, the model effectively predicted mean RTs for correct and error responses, accuracy values, RT distributions, and how these variables change across experimental manipulations through distribution, not shape.
Finally, to conclude my review with the observations I liked and did not like as much A use of informal language cannot be incorporated in a research paper. Stylistically, you will lose marks in the final submission. I believe that the diffusion model is the best way to provide with correct and error RTs, RT distributions and accuracy values, which will show if accuracy is the same or different for older and younger participants. I liked how a comparison was made between the diffusion model and other diffusion models to show how they fit to a lexical- decision experiment. I also liked how subjects of similar RT performance, whom made few errors were grouped together to form supersubjects as this will assure the reliability and validity of data collection. The study didn’t rely only on the diffusion model, but have used another procedure for examining RTs in aging called Brinley plots. The model was very beneficial in interpreting experimental outcomes for issues like aging and speed of processing. However, when a comparison was made between the diffusion model and other diffusion models, not much was said about how similar or different they are from one another. I suggest more information about the different models to be explained, so that whomever wants to replicate the study knows which model to go for. Error RTs in this study were hard to decode because of bias of movement toward one direction, which makes responses slower in the other direction. I propose a suitable devise for easier interpretation of error RTs.
___10___ (10) Paper includes information about the methodology and findings of the articles
___15___ (20) Each article is evaluated and critiqued
___0___ (10) Research articles are well integrated
___8___ (10) A conclusion is offered regarding the popular press article that follows from the content of the scientific papers
33/50x.4= 13.2%
(Include this when talking about the methodology part in the three-step priming lexical decision article. Say that we replicated the study, but I need this part summarized in a few lines and answering the professor’s feedback in red of the choice od participants, etc…)
My classmates and I were convenient enough to replicate the experiment in the three-step priming in lexical decision article by Dorothee J. Chwilla and Herman H. J. Kolk.The experiment was successful in conducting an analysis of 37 female participants, aged 20-30, from Kuwait University who are majoring in English Linguistics. I would say majority of the students, myself included, do not spend enough hours on reading, speaking, or even writing in English. The range of hours the participants spend communicating in English is from 1-10 hours per day. Bearing in mind that only one student converses in English for 10 hours per day, which is fairly good in consideration to our other classmates who fall in the medium of 5.5 hours, which is not sufficient for our level of education. When it comes to the hours spent reading in the target language, the rage goes from 1 to 6 hours per day and 3.5 hours of reading being the medium. As per writing in English, the range is from 1 hour to 6 hours, which again is not much for our level. Between 4 hours to 15 hours are the total hours of English usage per day. The range of This mapped a critical example of the fundamental attributes and controls that were essential in conducting a research with most of the students having to develop the critical contextual attributes as underlined in the public school setting. The experiment drew the participants from the public schools and it was critical in creating a proper examination of the content and models that were used in the experiment.
The CogLab experiment model was developed and creatively underlined through assessing and making concrete models and assessments. I tested it out on my own laptop when I was at a café. We were presented with 50-60 white words and nonwords that were all capitalized in letters that were displayed on a black background. We had to answer by pushing the symbol “/” for a word and /z/ if it was a nonword. The experiment used a three word lexicon with the associated words RT, Unassociated words RT, and the words then non-words RT. Of course there were numerical/quantitative variables as this is not a fixed yes or no sort of experiment. My results are example 25 from the excel sheet. My answer was 577.6667 for associated words RT, 593.26666 unassociated words RT, 976.5714 words then nonwords RT, 580.4286 nonword then word RT, and finally 1205.7142 two nonwords RT.
____6__(10) Paper details & legitimizes choice of participants, data collecting methods, materials, variables, and procedure
For your final draft, try to legitimize choice of participants and why you believe they are good candidates for your study. Additionally, you avoid discussing the stimuli and maintain a circular discussion around English usage of the participants which has little relevance to the methodology. Relate the associated lists from the stimuli to the published literature and remove the results highlighted in yellow.