Nebes R D, Halligan E M
Department of Psychiatry, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
Psychol Aging. 1995 Dec;10(4):590-6. doi: 10.1037//0882-7974.10.4.590.
Semantic constraints produced by sentence context reduce the time normal adults take to decide whether a given stimulus constitutes a meaningful ending to that sentence. The mechanism responsible for this constraint effect is thought to involve generation of featural restrictions based on context. In the present study, participants heard a sentence whose last word was replaced by an object picture. They decided whether the object formed a sensible ending to that sentence. Contextual constraint present in the sentences greatly influenced decision time: the greater the constraint, the faster the decision. Alzheimer patients were as affected by contextual constraint as were normal adults. The normality of the constraint effect in Alzheimer patients suggests that they can generate featural restrictions and thus retain knowledge of the semantic attributes of objects.
句子语境产生的语义限制减少了正常成年人判断给定刺激是否构成该句子有意义结尾所需的时间。人们认为，造成这种限制效应的机制涉及根据语境生成特征限制。在本研究中，参与者听到一个句子，其最后一个单词被一幅物体图片所取代。他们判断该物体是否构成该句子的合理结尾。句子中存在的语境限制对判断时间有很大影响：限制越大，判断越快。阿尔茨海默病患者与正常成年人一样受到语境限制的影响。阿尔茨海默病患者的限制效应正常，这表明他们能够生成特征限制，从而保留对物体语义属性的知识。
