Some attractions of verb agreement.

In English, words like scissors are grammatically plural but conceptually singular, while words like suds are both grammatically and conceptually plural. Words like army can be construed plurally, despite being grammatically singular. To explore whether and how congruence between grammatical and conceptual number affected the production of subject-verb number agreement in English, we elicited sentence completions for complex subject noun phrases like The advertisement for the scissors. In these phrases, singular subject nouns were followed by distractor words whose grammatical and conceptual numbers varied. The incidence of plural attraction (the use of plural verbs after plural distractors) increased only when distractors were grammatically plural, and revealed no influence from the distractors' number meanings. Companion experiments in Dutch offered converging support for this account and suggested that similar agreement processes operate in that language. The findings argue for a component of agreement that is sensitive primarily to the grammatical reflections of number. Together with other results, the evidence indicates that the implementation of agreement in languages like English and Dutch involves separable processes of number marking and number morphing, in which number meaning plays different parts.

Semantic and phonological activation in noun and pronoun production.

Speakers can refer to objects and other entities by nouns or pronouns. The present article investigated the production of gender-marked pronouns in German. Four picture-word interference experiments are reported, addressing 2 questions. First, is the lemma of a referent noun (i.e., the representation of the referent noun's semantic and syntactic properties) accessed when producing a pronoun? Second, if so, is this access confined to the lemma, or will the referent noun's phonological form be activated, too? The results suggest that in generating pronouns, speakers accessed the lemma of the referent noun, whereas its phonological form was not substantially activated. The results are discussed in the context of other recent experimental studies of pronoun and noun production.

Priming effects from phonologically related distractors in picture-word interference.

In the cross-modal picture-word interference task, distractors phonologically related to a to-be-named picture facilitate the naming response as compared to unrelated distractors. Our experiment shows that this phonological priming effect can be obtained with as early an SOA as -300 ms. The experiment also demonstrates that this priming effect cannot be attributed to strategic behaviour of the participants as opposed to automatic preactivation processes in the lexical-conceptual system. The implications for studies using the picture-word interference task as a tool for investigating lexicalization processes in speech production are discussed.

Shared neighborhood effects in masked orthographic priming.

Several studies have found effects of orthographically related masked nonword primes on lexical decisions to target words. These effects have been explained by the neighborhood characteristics of the target word (Forster, 1987), but the neighborhood characteristics of the prime in combination with the target are also found to be important (Hinton, Liversedge, & Underwood, 1998). In this study, we present a new account of masked form-priming effects based on the shared neighborhood of prime and target. Shared neighbors are words that are activated by both prime and target. According to the interactive activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981), shared neighborhood determines the size of priming effects. This prediction was tested and confirmed in a masked priming experiment that manipulated the shared neighborhood density of complete primes.

Syntactic gender and semantic expectancy: ERPs reveal early autonomy and late interaction.

This experiment explored the effect of semantic expectancy on the processing of grammatical gender, and vice versa, in German using event-related-potentials (ERPs). Subjects were presented with correct sentences and sentences containing an article-noun gender agreement violation. The cloze probability of the nouns was either high or low. ERPs were measured on the nouns. The low-cloze nouns evoked a larger N400 than the high-cloze nouns. Gender violations elicited a left-anterior negativity (LAN, 300-600 msec) for all nouns. An additional P600 component was found only in high-cloze nouns. The N400 was independent of the gender mismatch variable; the LAN was independent of the semantic variable, whereas an interaction of the two variables was found in the P600. This finding indicates that syntactic and semantic processes are autonomous during an early processing stage, whereas these information types interact during a later processing phase.

Grammatical gender in noun phrase production: the gender interference effect in German.

Languages appear to differ in the way definite determiners are selected during noun phrase production. M. Miozzo and A. Caramazza (1999) proposed that a distinction should be made between early- and late-selection languages. In early-selection languages, the noun's gender uniquely specifies the definite determiner, whereas in late-selection languages the definite determiner can be specified only during the phonological encoding of the noun phrase. This hypothesis predicts that in picture-word interference experiments on noun phrase production in early selection languages like German, one should obtain a gender interference effect. In 2 experiments on German, this prediction is confirmed. The implications of these results for the proposed distinction between early- and late-selection languages are discussed.

Context effects in visual word recognition: lexical relatedness and syntactic context.

In three experiments, we investigated how associative word-word priming effects in German depend on different types of syntactic context in which the related words are embedded. The associative relation always concerned a verb as prime and a noun as target. Prime word and target word were embedded in visually presented strings of words that formed either a correct sentence, a scrambled list of words, or a sentence in which the target noun and the preceding definite article disagreed in syntactic gender. In contrast to previous studies (O'Seaghdha, 1989; Simpson, Peterson, Casteel, & Burgess, 1989), associative priming effects were not only obtained in correct sentences but also in scrambled word lists. Associative priming, however, was not obtained when the definite article and the target noun disagreed in syntactic gender. The latter finding suggests that a rather local violation of syntactic coherence reduces or eliminates word-word priming effects. The results are discussed in the context of related work on the effect of gender dis-/agreement between a syntactic context and a target noun.

Double dissociation of processing temporal and spatial information in working memory.

Based on the converging evidence supporting the view of domain specific object and spatial working memory processes, the question was addressed whether the property of domain specificity holds equally for temporal information. Using a selective interference paradigm the objective was to test a dissociation of the processing of temporal duration and spatial location information in working memory of intact human subjects. Subjects performed a temporal and a spatial memory task in which they were required to indicate whether the study and the test stimuli were the same or different in duration (temporal memory) or in location (spatial memory) as primary tasks. Both primary tasks were combined with three types of interference tasks, a spatial classification memory task, a temporal classification memory task and a non-interference baseline task--to be performed in-between the presentation of study and test stimuli. Memory for temporal duration was shown to be impaired by the temporal classification task but not by the spatial classification task; memory for spatial position showed the opposite pattern of impairment. These data thus provide evidence for the view that temporal and spatial working memory contents are subject to selective interference, reflecting a functional dissociation in the processing of temporal duration and spatial location information. The results are interpreted as evidence for the domain specificity in the processing of temporal information in working memory.

Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: an analysis with event-related potentials.

Event-related potentials were used to study how parsing of German relative clauses is influenced by semantic information. Subjects read well-formed sentences containing either a subject or an object relative clause and answered questions concerning the thematic roles expressed in those sentences. Half of the sentences contained past participles that on grounds of semantic plausibility biased either a subject or an object relative reading; the other half contained past participles that provided no semantic information favoring either reading. The past participle elicited an N400 component, larger in amplitude for neutral than for semantically biased verbs, but this occurred only in the case of subject relative clauses. More specific effects were obtained only for a subgroup of subjects, when these were grouped into fast and slow comprehenders on the basis of their question-answering reaction times. Fast comprehenders showed larger N400 amplitudes for neutral than for semantically biased past participles in general and larger N400s for the latter when there was a bias for an object relative reading as opposed to a subject relative reading. Syntactic ambiguity resolution, indicated by an auxiliary in sentence final position, was associated in this subgroup with a positive component (P345), larger in amplitude for auxiliaries indicating an object relative reading than for those indicating a subject relative reading. The latter component was independent of semantically biasing information given by a preceding past participle. Implications of these findings for models of language comprehension are considered.

Lexical access in the production of noun phrases.

In order to encode an event or a thought into language, the speaker has to access words from the mental lexicon and order them according to the rules of syntax. The present study taps into these components of language production as they proceed in time. The utterances investigated were Dutch noun phrases with a prenominal adjective (e.g., het groene huis--the green house). The results of two picture--word interference experiments showed interference effects from semantically related noun distractors, extending findings from production of single words to the production of phrases. In addition, the syntactic format of the noun phrase had an influence on the size and the time course of the semantic interference effect. On the basis of the results of these two experiments, a working model of the processes involved in the production of noun phrases is proposed.

[Inhibition of testosterone metabolism by 17-alpha-estradiol in rat liver slices]. / Hemmung des Testosteron-Stoffwechsels durch 17 alpha-Estradiol in Rattenleberschnitten.

Inhibition of the Testosterone Metabolism in Rat Liver Slices by 17 alpha-Estradiol. The influence of 17 alpha-estradiol (CAS 57-91-0), a hormonally almost inactive isomer of physiological 17 beta-estradiol, on the metabolism of [14C]-labeled testosterone in rat liver slices was investigated. The analysis of extracts from incubates (3.0 ml medium, 100 mg liver slices, 416 nmol [14C]-testosterone, 0.1-30 micrograms 17 alpha-estradiol, 37 degrees C, 30 min) by thin layer chromatography showed, that 30 micrograms of 17 alpha-estradiol inhibited the testosterone turnover in liver slices of female animals. The failure of a significant inhibitory effect in liver slices of male animals is attributed to the known, much smaller total turnover of testosterone in male liver cells. The amount of unchanged 4-en-3-oxo-steroid (testosterone and 4-androstene-3,17-dione) was increased by a factor of 2.65 and 2.25, respectively. With high probability, the inhibition was the result of a decreased hydrogenation of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone (DHT, 17 beta-hydroxy-5 alpha-androstan-3-one), catalyzed by 5 alpha-reductase, since the production rates of DHT and the DHT-transformation metabolites (5 alpha-androstane-3 alpha,17 beta-diol and 5 alpha-androstane-3,17-dione) were significantly lowered (factors: 0.16, 0.61, 0.61, respectively). In further experiments 17 beta-estradiol and 17 alpha-ethinylestradiol could be shown to inhibit the testosterone turnover in liver slices of female rats, too, but to a lower extent that 17 alpha-estradiol (relative inhibitory effects: 17 alpha-estradiol:17 beta-estradiol:17 alpha-ethinylestradiol = 100 : 73 : 58).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Lexical and conceptual factors in the naming of relations.

Recent models of language production distinguish three main stages, the generation of a preverbal (or conceptual) message level representation, the stage of linguistic formulation processes (which access lexical items and generate the syntactic frames in which these items are inserted), and the stage of articulation. This means that at least two sources of difficulty in producing a lexical item must be distinguished. First, the difficulty can be due to properties of the message representation. So, for example, several concepts may compete for expression. Second, a given lexical item might be more difficult to access than another item because of differences in the complexity of the processes translating from conceptual to lexical representations. The present study presents evidence for these two sources of difficulty in producing lexical items for the domain of semantically unmarked versus marked dimensional adjectives (e.g., big versus small). The first set of experiments establishes an effect of semantic markedness in language production which is due to a difference in the difficulty of accessing unmarked versus marked lexical items. The second set of experiments shows that competition between concepts for expression can lead to incorrect selection of an (unintended) lexical item (as reflected in certain types of speech errors), or to a higher processing load for producing the correct (intended) lexical item. Together, these experiments support the distinction between a preverbal conceptual and a lexical level of representation in language production, and show that both levels contribute to the relative difficulty of producing lexical items.

[Steroid hormone transformation in the gonads and liver of aged rats]. / Steroidhormon-Transformation in Gonaden und Leber von Ratten im hohen Alter.

In order to study some aspects of the steroid hormone balance in old age the following organ functions of young and senescent male and female animals were investigated: 1) The capacity of testicular (45, 68-75 and 900 day-old animals) and ovarian tissue homogenates (29, 45, 66 and 900 day-old animals) to metabolically transform the sex hormone precursor, progesterone. 2) The capacity of liver slices (60-90 and 900 day-old animals) to generate a sex-specific metabolite pattern during incubation with testosterone. 3) The activities of some enzymes of steroid metabolism, which normally show sex differences in liver cell fractions (60-90 and 900 day-old animals). The testicular capacity of senescent animals to synthesize 17 alpha-hydroxyprogesterone, androstenedione and testosterone (main pathway of androgen biosynthesis) is drastically reduced compared to that of young adult rats; the reduction also extends to the production of highly polar C19O3- and C21O3-steroids. In contrast to these deficiencies, conversion of progesterone to 20 alpha-dihydroprogesterone increases in old age, whereas the generation of 5 alpha-hydrogenated compounds from testosterone and androstenedione remains unchanged. If the group of adolescent 45 day-old animals is also taken into consideration, then the biosynthetic sequence from progesterone to testosterone exhibits a biphasic developmental course. Production rates rise from low levels only to fall back to lower rates of synthesis in old age. In no age group can the production of oestrogens in measurable quantities be detected. However, 5 alpha-hydrogenated C19O2-steroid metabolites are detected, albeit only in prepuberal animals. After puberty only progesterone, 20 alpha-dihydroprogesterone and the 5 alpha-pregnane derivatives of these two steroids can be demonstrated. The pattern of the respective metabolites undergoes an age-dependent metabolite-specific development ending (900 day-old animals) with minimal yields of products (less than 21% of progesterone is converted). The production of hydroxylated metabolites (highly polar C21O3-steroid fraction) decreases very early in life (between day 29 and 45) to values indistinguishable from those of old animals. The sexually highly differentiated metabolite pattern of hepatic testosterone metabolism typical of young adult animals (60-90 day-old) is not prominent in old age. Both sexes exhibit a retarded testosterone turnover due to a decrease in the hydroxylating activity (males being more affected than females) and a deficiency of 5 alpha-hydrogenation (females only).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Effect of gonadectomy and exogenous sex hormone administration on the concentrations of hepatic oestrogen receptors and hepatic atypical sex hormone binding protein (HASP) in the rat.

The concentrations of hepatic oestrogen receptors and atypical sex hormone-binding protein are regulated by sex hormones in different manners. Ovariectomy of female rats leads to a significant increase in the concentration of hepatic oestrogen receptors, which can be reversed following administration of either androgens or oestrogens. No differences are observed between total binding site and unoccupied receptor concentrations. Intact male rats contain significantly lower total binding site concentrations and these are not affected by either testectomy or subsequent androgen administration. However, treatment of male castrates with oestradiol leads to the induction of typical female levels. It is not possible to determine the concentrations of unoccupied receptors in intact or gonadectomized males, or rats of either sex treated with androgens, due to masking by the moderate affinity, high capacity oestradiol binder (hepatic atypical sex hormone-binding protein, HASP). Oestradiol binding to this protein is not affected by testectomy nor subsequent androgen administration, but is reduced pressed following treatment with oestradiol. It is also induced in ovariectomized rats by androgens. Oestradiol binding to this protein can be prevented by inclusion of sodium thiocyanate in the assay buffer, thereby permitting unhindered measurement of the oestrogen receptor concentrations.

Contradictory evidence concerning the "universal" role of growth hormone in the regulation of the enzyme activities of hepatic steroid metabolism.

Recent publications suggest that the sexual dimorphism observed in the activities of enzymes involved in drug and steroid metabolism in rat liver are due to sex-specific differences in the rate of growth hormone release. In this paper we set out to demonstrate that this hypothesis cannot be generalized, but has its limitations. Prepuberal hypophysectomy led to the expected "masculinization" of the activities of cytoplasmic 3 alpha-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (3 alpha-HSDH), microsomal 3 alpha-HSDH and microsomal 5 alpha-reductase which could be reversed by continuous infusion of human growth hormone (hGH). However, one activity did not conform to this pattern: cytoplasmic 17 beta-HSDH activity reacted to hypophysectomy with a "feminization" and was completely unaffected by hGH infusion. Moreover, microsomal 3 alpha-HSDH in hypophysectomized rats was "feminized" as efficiently by infusion of ovine prolactin (oPRL) as by hGH. Ablation of the pituitary caused loss of measurable cytoplasmic receptor oestrogen concentrations. The inability of either hypophyseal hormone to cause consistent and significant elevation of oestrogen receptor concentrations is probably due to the early age at which the animals were hypophysectomized.

3 alpha, 3 beta and 17 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase activities in the cytoplasmic and microsomal fractions of human liver.

Optimized assay systems for the determination of cytoplasmic and microsomal 3 alpha-, 3 beta-, and 17 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (HSDH) activities in human liver have been developed. Using these methods the activities of cytoplasmic 3 alpha-, 17 beta-, and microsomal 3 alpha- and 3 beta-HSDH were measured in cell fractions prepared from liver biopsies from 17 patients who showed no signs of endocrinologic disturbances. The means and standard deviations (SD) of these four activities (nmol/min/mg protein) were as follows: cytoplasmic 3 alpha-HSDH, 1.03 +/- 0.34; cytoplasmic 17 beta-HSDH, 0.365 +/- 0.129; microsomal 3 alpha-HSDH, 2.07 +/- 1.16; microsomal 3 beta-HSDH, 8.95 +/- 5.20. No dependence on sex or age was detected, but this may have been due to the heterogeneity of the sample material rather than a genuine absence of such correlations.

Changes in the activities of microsomal enzymes involved in hepatic steroid metabolism in the rat after administration of androgenic, estrogenic, progestational, anabolic and catatoxic steroids.

Several steroids (5 beta-dihydrotestosterone, 19-nortestosterone, methyltrienolone, norethisterone, medroxyprogesterone acetate, cyproterone acetate, chlormadinone acetate and 16 alpha-cyanopregnenolone) were tested for their ability to influence the activities of three sexually differentiated hepatic microsomal enzymes (3 alpha- and 3 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase and 5 alpha-reductase) in male and female gonadectomized and intact female rats. Of the steroids tested only 5 beta-dihydrotestosterone was completely ineffective. The other tested steroids elicited varying degrees of "masculinization" with a distinct gradation of effect according to the enzyme activity measured and animal model used. 5 alpha-Reductase was the most sensitive enzyme activity and 3 alpha-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase the least. Male castrates responded better than female castrates, and these in turn better than intact females. The mechanism of action of three of the steroids (methyltrienolone, medroxyprogesterone acetate and norethisterone) was examined. Both flutamide and estradiol were able to block the action of methyltrienolone and medroxyprogesterone acetate, but not that of norethisterone. It is concluded that methyltrienolone and medroxyprogesterone acetate probably masculinize the enzyme activities by the same mechanisms as androgens, whereas the repression of 5 alpha-reductase activity elicited by norethisterone administration involves a different route.

Effects of fasting on the distribution of cytoplasmic and nuclear oestrogen receptors in rat liver, uterus, pituitary and hypothalamus before and after exogenous oestrogen administration.

The accumulation of oestrogen receptors in the liver cell nuclei of intact female rats 45 min after administration of 100 micrograms 17 alpha-ethynyloestradiol-17 beta i.p., decreased progressively during a 72-h fast from 2550 +/- 860 to 257 +/- 67 fmol/mg DNA, a level not significantly different from that in uninjected animals. Cytoplasmic oestrogen receptor concentrations also decreased, but only to about 60% of the original level (from 84.1 +/- 27.5 to 50.3 +/- 2.09 fmol/mg protein during the fast). Similar differences were found when these parameters were examined in normally fed and 72-h-fasted ovariectomized rats. On the other hand these parameters were unaffected in uterus, pituitary and hypothalamus. Uterine cytoplasmic receptor concentrations remained at about 500 fmol/mg protein during the fasting period, those in the pituitary and hypothalamus at about 230 and 30 fmol/mg protein, respectively. Nor was in vivo translocation in these organs affected by fasting. Regardless of nutritional status, the nuclear oestrogen receptor concentrations in uterus rose from about 500 to 2000 fmol/mg DNA after ethynyloestradiol administration, those in the pituitary and hypothalamus from approximately 250 to 2000 and from 250 to 500 fmol/mg DNA respectively.