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<Paper uid="P04-3011">
  <Title>Phil.Maguire@ucd.ie</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Empirical Study
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Two separate experiments were carried out. In the first, the prime had the same head as the target and in the second, the modifier was the repeated constituent. In both experiments, there were three conditions. In one condition the prime used the same relation as the target; in another it used a different relation. There was also a neutral condition in which the target combination was preceded by a combination with no common noun constituent. The experimental design follows that of Gagne (2001) and facilitates the analysis of the relative amounts of priming derived from a combination containing the same head or the same modifier as the target. Priming was evaluated by comparing each of the first two conditions with the neutral condition and by comparing response times to target combinations in the same-relation condition with response times to target combinations in the different-relation condition.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.1 Method
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Materials. In both experiments, sixty combined concepts were created as targets. For each target combination, three prime combinations were constructed. One used the same relation as the target and either the same head (experiment 1) or the same modifier (experiment 2). Similarly, another combination used a different relation. The control combination shared no noun constituent with the target. Three lists of stimuli were arranged such that there was an equal number of each prime type in each list. Across all three lists, each target was seen with each type of prime combination.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Our materials were controlled for plausibility and familiarity. Two raters scored the plausibility and familiarity of the referents of the prime combinations on a Likert scale from 1 to 7. A two-sided Wilcoxon signed-ranks test revealed no reliable differences between conditions for plausibility, familiarity or average syllable length (p &gt; 0.05).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> Procedure. Each participant was exposed to one of the lists and hence saw each target item only once. The pairs of prime and target items were presented in a randomised order along with 60 filler pairs and the complete set of filler pairs was presented to each individual. Participants sat in front of a computer screen and placed the index finger of their left hand on the F key of the keyboard and the index finger of their right hand on the J key. Participants were told that J corresponded to &amp;quot;Juste&amp;quot; and F corresponded to &amp;quot;Faux&amp;quot;. Trial presentation was self-paced. Following exposure to the prime combination, participants indicated whether it had a sensible, literal interpretation by pressing the appropriate key. Subsequently, the target combination was similarly displayed and participants made another sensibility judgment. There was nothing in the method of presentation to suggest any connection between consecutive combinations.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Participants. 36 native French speakers participated, 18 in each experiment (ages 20-31, M = 24.2). This selection consisted of students and teachers based in Ireland.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.2 Results and Discussion
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> 9.1% of trials were excluded from the analysis.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> 0.8% of trials were rejected because participants pressed a key other than J or F. Additionally, 4.6% of trials were excluded in cases where the response &amp;quot;faux&amp;quot; was incorrectly given. Responses deemed unreasonably fast (&lt; 400ms; 0.2%) and unreasonably slow (&gt; 4000ms; 0.9%) were also excluded. After eliminating all trials which did not meet the above criteria, any response times which were more than three standard deviations outside each participant's mean were also rejected. This eliminated another 2.6% of responses. A repeated measures ANOVA test was conducted to examine the effect of prime type on sense-nonsense judgments for each experiment. Tables 1 and 2 display the response time (in milliseconds) for appropriate responses to the target combinations in each of the experiments.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
Target Combinations in Experiment 2
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Evidence of priming. Responses to the target combination were faster when the prime and target shared a constituent noun. In the first experiment, the 159ms difference between the same-relation and neutral conditions was reliable, Fsubject(1, 34) = 31.70, p &lt; .01; Fitem(1, 118) = 27.30, p &lt; .01. The 154ms difference between the different-relation and neutral conditions was also reliable, Fsubject(1,  34) = 22.22, p &lt; .01; Fitem(1, 118) = 27.309, p &lt; .01. In the second experiment the 64 ms difference between the same-relation and neutral conditions</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> difference between the different-relation and neutral conditions was not reliable, Fsubject(2, 34) = .587, p &gt; .05; Fitem(2, 118) = .337, p &gt; .05.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Relation influence. As predicted by the CARIN theory, the first experiment, in which the head was the repeated constituent, revealed no evidence of relation influence. No significant difference was found between response times to target 1 The relation of the neutral condition was considered irrelevant following Gagne's (2001) finding that priming does not occur when the preceding combination does not share either of the target's constituent nouns combinations in the same-relation and in the neutral conditions. The 5ms difference between the two conditions was not reliable (Fs &lt; 1). However, in the repeated modifier experiment the target was easier to interpret when it was preceded by a combination with the same relation than when it was preceded by one with a different relation.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> Participants responded to targets following the same relation prime 45ms quicker than they did to targets following the different relation prime, Fsubject(2, 34) = 4.349, p &lt; .05; Fitem(2, 118) = 4.194, p &lt; .05. These data indicate that French speakers are only sensitive to relational information associated with the modifier.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> Summary. The results of the two experiments show that the influence of a recently viewed combination is affected by its relation only in cases where the target shares the same modifier (experiment 2) and not in cases where it shares the same head (experiment 1). Thus &amp;quot;ruisseau de montagne&amp;quot; (mountain stream) was more effective than &amp;quot;chaussures de montagne&amp;quot; (mountain shoes) at priming &amp;quot;glacier de montagne&amp;quot; (mountain glacier) while &amp;quot;sac de voyage&amp;quot; (travel bag) and &amp;quot;sac de cuir&amp;quot; (leather bag) were equally effective at priming &amp;quot;sac de sport&amp;quot; (sports bag). These results are similar to those of Gagne (2001) and are thus consistent with research in the English language indicating that relational information is associated with the modifier and not with the head noun. Since these effects have been replicated in a language in which the order of the modifier and head are reversed, this suggests that modifiers and head nouns maintain the same role in the process of interpretation regardless of the order in which they are realised. Our findings confirm that relational information is a tangible feature of conceptual combinations and that the association between the modifier and the relation is an intrinsic property that is evident regardless of the order of the constituent nouns.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 General Discussion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> While our results correspond with those of Gagne (2001), we interpret them differently. In her study Gagne distinguished two priming effects, namely lexical priming and relation priming. She claimed that when the head noun was repeated, only lexical priming was observed but that when the modifier was repeated, both types of priming were evident. This distinction is not necessary. It is simpler to suppose that the repeated-modifier different-relation condition exhibits an interference effect which diminishes the effectiveness of lexical priming. Such an interference could arise for two reasons, neither of which requires an assumption of relation priming. The first possibility is that combinations using a different relation elicit no priming because a different sense of the modifier is associated with each relation. For example, the French term &amp;quot;en chocolat&amp;quot; (made of chocolate) has very different connotations to &amp;quot;a chocolat&amp;quot; (for chocolate) or &amp;quot;de chocolat&amp;quot; (of chocolate). While these terms employ the same modifier, they each have different meanings since the preposition immediately elucidates the modifying capacity of the noun. Though the relation associated with a modifier in English may not be expressed in the same way, the conceptual disparity is likely to persist nonetheless. It is therefore conceivable that the relation with which the modifier is associated can change its meaning and as a result, one modifier might not necessarily prime a combination using the same modifier in a different sense.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> A second possibility is that the availability of one meaning of a modifier is increased after encountering a prime using it with that sense.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> When the same modifier is encountered being used with a different sense in the target, the original sense is more accessible than the appropriate one.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Hence, following the prime &amp;quot;sel de mer&amp;quot; (sea salt), participants may find it more difficult to interpret &amp;quot;mal de mer&amp;quot; (sea sickness) because they are more likely to assume the &amp;quot;from the sea&amp;quot; sense of the modifier instead of the correct &amp;quot;caused by the sea&amp;quot; interpretation. An explanation of our results may be due to a combination of the above possibilities, both of which emphasise the co-dependence of the modifier and its associated relation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> While our results have emphasised the link between modifier and relation, they do not suggest that modifier relational frequency is the only factor involved in selecting a plausible relation and it is likely that both the head and the modifier are involved in this process. In order to develop an accurate computational model of conceptual combination, future studies will need to consider the influence of other contributing factors. Certain heads and modifiers are strongly biased towards suggesting one particular relation. For instance, modifiers denoting substances are biased towards the &lt;head MADE OF modifier&gt; relation (e.g.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> &amp;quot;plastic&amp;quot;) and in the same way, head nouns with a strongly associated schema, such as &amp;quot;factory&amp;quot;, can be biased towards suggesting a certain relation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> Furthermore, relation likelihood may be influenced by the presence of facilitating features (Devereux &amp; Costello, 2004). Facilitating features are those features of a pair of concepts that are necessary for a given relation to be possible. For example a compound with the modifier &amp;quot;kitchen&amp;quot; is unlikely to be interpreted using the &lt;head MADE OF modifier&gt; relation since kitchens are not a type of substance. Computational models of conceptual combination may have to account for the characteristics of heads and modifiers individually in order to simulate the ways in which each constituent influences relation selection.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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