The processing of interlexical homographs in translation recognition and lexical decision: support for non-selective access to bilingual memory.

In three experiments we looked at the processing of interlexical homographs by Dutch-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1 we employed the translation recognition task, a task that forces the participants to activate both language systems simultaneously. In this task the processing of interlexical homographs was inhibited substantially compared to the processing of matched control words, especially when the homograph reading to be selected was the less frequent of the homograph's two readings. In Experiments 2 and 3 we used the lexical decision task: In one condition we asked the participants to categorize letter strings as words or nonwords in Dutch; in a second condition we asked them to do so in English. The makeup of the stimulus set in Experiment 2 permitted the participants to ignore the instructions and to instantiate the task in a language-neutral form--that is, to categorize the letter strings as words in either Dutch or English. Under these circumstances a small, frequency-dependent inhibitory effect for homographs was obtained, but only in condition Dutch. In Experiment 3 the participants were forced in a language-specific processing mode by the inclusion of "nonwords" that were in fact words in the non-target language. Large frequency-dependent inhibitory effects for homographs were now obtained in both language conditions. The combined results are interpreted as support for the view that bilingual lexical access is non-selective.

Phonologic mediation is fundamental to reading: evidence from beginning readers.

Three tasks were employed to investigate the role of assembled phonology in beginning readers. In two proofreading tasks, children had more trouble finding pseudohomophone misspellings (stimuli with phonology identical to that of a word) than control misspellings (stimuli that do not share their phonology with a word). In a lexical-decision task, they had more trouble deciding that pseudohomophone misspellings were non-words than deciding that control misspellings were non-words. Finally, in a semantic-categorization task, children had more trouble rejecting pseudohomophone misspellings as a member of a designated category than rejecting control misspellings. Differences between more and less advanced readers occurred, but they need not be attributed to differential use of phonology in word recognition. Instead, they were explained in terms of a difference between reader groups in spelling-verification efficiency. The results of the present studies on beginning reading parallel studies on skilled reading by Van Orden et al. (1992). The main conclusion was that assembled phonology plays an important role in word recognition in beginning readers.

Attenuation of malaria infection, paralysis and lesions in the central nervous system by low protein diets in rats.

Young Wistar rats developed a fulminant infection when inoculated with the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei. Rats that died during the infection exhibited a progressive paralysis of the extremities, a rapidly decreasing body temperature and minute haemorrhages in the brain. Increasing the level of protein in the diet from 4 to 8 and 16% was accompanied by an increase in morbidity and mortality from 15 to 40 and 90% respectively on day 6 of the infection. Increasing the level of dietary protein also increased the reticulocyte count of the peripheral blood in infected and non-infected rats. The attenuation of the cerebral syndrome in rats fed a diet low in protein may be related to changes in erythropoiesis or to changes in immune reactivity.