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Development of Memory Structures for Homographs Using Pathfinder Network Representations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

Francisco Nievas  and
Fernando Justicia
Francisco Nievas*
Affiliation:
University of Almería
Fernando Justicia
Affiliation:
University of Granada
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addessed to Francisco Nievas Cazorla, Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Universidad de Almería, La Cañada de San Urbano, 04120 Almería (Spain). E-mail: fnievas@ual.es
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Abstract

Some studies with children have shown that there is no semantic priming at short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in lexical decision and naming tasks for homographs. The predictions of spreading activation theories might explain this missing effect. There may be differences in children's and adults' memory structures. We have explored this hypothesis. The development of memory structure representations for homographs was measured by a Pathfinder algorithm. In Experiment 1, the three dependent variables were: the number of links in the network, closeness measures (C), and distances between nodes. Results revealed developmental differences in network structure representations in adults and children. In Experiment 2, results revealed that these differences were not due to the cohort effect. In Experiment 3, the relationship between associative strength, as measured by associative norms, and distances, as measured by Pathfinder algorithm, was explored. The results of these three experiments and empirical research from semantic priming experiments show that these differences in memory structure representations could be one of the sources of the missing semantic priming effect in children.

Algunos estudios con niños han mostrado que no existe facilitación semántica, con intervalos de tiempo cortos, en tareas de decisión léxica y en nombrar en homógrafos. Las predicciones de las teorías de difusión de la activación podrían explicar la ausencia de este efecto. Podría haber diferencias en las estructuras de memoria entre niños y adultos. Nosotros hemos explorado esta hipótesis. El desarrollo de las representaciones de estructuras de memoria para homógrafos se midió por el algoritmo Pathfinder. En el primer experimento, las tres variables dependientes fueron: el número de conexiones en la estructura, las medidas C y las distancias entre nodos. Los resultados revelaron diferencias evolutivas en las representaciones de las estructuras de red entre niños y adultos. En el experimento 2, los resultados mostraron que estas diferencias no eran debidas al efecto de cohorte. En el experimento 3, se exploró la relación entre la fuerza asociativa, medida por las normas de asociación, y las distancias, como medida del algoritmo Pathfinder. Los resultados de estos tres experimentos y la investigación empírica de los experimentos de facilitación semántica muestran que estas diferencias en las representaciones de estructuras de memoria podrían ser una de las fuentes para explicar la ausencia de facilitación semántica en niños.

Keywords

Pathfindermemory structure representationssemantic primingcohort effectPathfinderrepresentaciones de estructuras de memoriafacilitación semánticaefecto cohorte
Type
Articles
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , May 2003 , pp. 12 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

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