Neuroscience
Here in the UK we love our acronyms. Whether we're watching the BBC, proud of the RAF, donating to the RSPCA, or taking the car in for its MOT, Marc Brysbaert and colleagues observe in their new study that the sheer number of acronyms can be overwhelming for foreigners visiting the country. Such practicalities aside, acronyms represent a further curiosity for psychologists studying language because they seem to be treated by fluent speakers as if they are words and yet they break all the orthographic rules of the language. Consider the BBC - no proper words in English lack a vowel, start with BB, or end with BC.
To test whether acronyms really are treated like words, Brysbaert's team used a procedure known as "masked associative priming". This is the finding that a target word is recognised more quickly as a word if it is preceded by a subliminally presented (i.e. one presented too quickly to be consciously seen) word with a related meaning. For example, asked to say as quickly as possible whether "toad" is a real word or not, participants will be much quicker to respond if "toad" was preceded by subliminal presentation of "frog".
For this experiment, Brysbaert and his colleagues used acronyms in an associative priming task and found that, just like words, they too exert a priming effect. Twenty-four participants were faster to recognise a string of letters as a real word when it was preceded by a related acronym - for example, "sandwich" preceded by subliminal presentation of "BLT" (which stands for bacon, lettuce and tomato). The effect shows that the meaning of the acronyms was decoded rapidly, without conscious awareness, just as happens with prime words. What's more, the effect was found whether acronyms were shown as all capitals, as they are normally encountered, or in a mix of lower and upper case, further showing that they really do seem to be treated like proper words.
"Whether this may be interpreted as an encouragement to further increase the number of acronyms in the English language is a different matter that cannot be addressed on the basis of the present data," the researchers said.
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Brysbaert, M., Speybroeck, S., & Vanderelst, D. (2009). Is there room for the BBC in the mental lexicon? On the recognition of acronyms. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1-11 DOI: 10.1080/17470210802585471
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Eating a BLT at the BBC - we love our acronyms but are they really words?
Here in the UK we love our acronyms. Whether we're watching the BBC, proud of the RAF, donating to the RSPCA, or taking the car in for its MOT, Marc Brysbaert and colleagues observe in their new study that the sheer number of acronyms can be overwhelming for foreigners visiting the country. Such practicalities aside, acronyms represent a further curiosity for psychologists studying language because they seem to be treated by fluent speakers as if they are words and yet they break all the orthographic rules of the language. Consider the BBC - no proper words in English lack a vowel, start with BB, or end with BC.To test whether acronyms really are treated like words, Brysbaert's team used a procedure known as "masked associative priming". This is the finding that a target word is recognised more quickly as a word if it is preceded by a subliminally presented (i.e. one presented too quickly to be consciously seen) word with a related meaning. For example, asked to say as quickly as possible whether "toad" is a real word or not, participants will be much quicker to respond if "toad" was preceded by subliminal presentation of "frog".
For this experiment, Brysbaert and his colleagues used acronyms in an associative priming task and found that, just like words, they too exert a priming effect. Twenty-four participants were faster to recognise a string of letters as a real word when it was preceded by a related acronym - for example, "sandwich" preceded by subliminal presentation of "BLT" (which stands for bacon, lettuce and tomato). The effect shows that the meaning of the acronyms was decoded rapidly, without conscious awareness, just as happens with prime words. What's more, the effect was found whether acronyms were shown as all capitals, as they are normally encountered, or in a mix of lower and upper case, further showing that they really do seem to be treated like proper words.
"Whether this may be interpreted as an encouragement to further increase the number of acronyms in the English language is a different matter that cannot be addressed on the basis of the present data," the researchers said.
_________________________________
Brysbaert, M., Speybroeck, S., & Vanderelst, D. (2009). Is there room for the BBC in the mental lexicon? On the recognition of acronyms. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1-11 DOI: 10.1080/17470210802585471Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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If you've got some revision to do, get yourself a sketch pad and start drawing out the words or concepts that you want to remember. That's the clear message from a series of studies in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology that demonstrates...
- We're Faster At Processing Words That Relate To Bigger Things
When it comes to the dictionary of the mind, size counts. I'm not talking about the printed size of a word, but rather the size of the object that the word denotes. A new study shows that we're faster at processing words that refer to big things...
- The Effect Of, Er, Hesitations In Speech
We'd all like to speak with unobstructed lucidity, but for most of us speech hesitations and pauses are unavoidable. Now psychologists have asked what effect these oral hiatuses have on listeners. Martin Corley and colleagues played recordings of...
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New, free psychology stuff on the global interweb: Why too much choice can be a bad thing. Wiring the nervous system. The neuroscience of decision making. How to make time slow down. Did the Diana moment make Britain a more emotionally healthy country...
- Tip Of The Fingers Syndrome
We’ve all had that ‘tip of the tongue’ feeling when we’re sure we know the word or name for something but we just can’t think of it. Now a study has shown that a similar phenomenon occurs in American Sign Language (ASL), in what the researchers...