The notion of salience has been singled out as the explanatory factor for a diverse range of linguistic phenomena. In particular, perceptual salience (e.g., visual salience of objects in the world, acoustic prominence of linguistic sounds) and semantic-pragmatic salience (e.g., prominence of recently mentioned or topical referents) have been shown to influence language comprehension and product...

We describe the application of a framework for salience metrics and linguistic variability with respect to the contextually adequate choice of referring expressions and grammatical roles: Where multiple meaning-equivalent candidate realizations are available that differ in one of these aspects, NLG systems can apply salience metrics to predict contextually adequate realization preferences. We e...

The current work sought to test the moderating role of a multicultural ideology on the relationship between categorisation salience and ingroup bias. Accordingly, in one experimental study, we manipulated categorisation salience and the accessibility of a multicultural ideology, and measured intergroup attitudes. Results show that categorisation salience only leads to ingroup bias when a multic...

Objectives: Research has suggested that higher mastery is associated with lower cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. This pilot study investigated how a range of psychosocial factors, including mastery, relate to CVD risk factors among Aboriginal people living in rural south-eastern Australia. Methods: Psychosocial and behavioural measures were obtained via questionnaire as part of developing a c...

Research on African American racial identity has utilized 2 distinct approaches. The mainstream approach has focused on universal properties associated with ethnic and racial identities. In contrast, the underground approach has focused on documenting the qualitative meaning of being African American, with an emphasis on the unique cultural and historical experiences of African Americans. The M...

This paper reports the results of two independent studies dealing with saliency effects within the domain of folkbiological knowledge. In Study 1 we present data from a free listing task that explored tree name generation among Tzotzil Maya of Zinacantán (Chiapas). Study 2 compares Menominee Native Americans with Majority Culture (nonprofessional) fish experts in central Wisconsin. Both studies...

Ninety-two clinic-referred and nonclinical mother-child dyads in Spain and the USA were observed in their home settings under naturalistic conditions for a total of 477 hours. Children in the clinic-referred dyads were considered troubled because of conduct problems. The observations were aimed at assessing two forms of mother-child asynchrony, either of which was expected to differentiate clin...

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that cultural worldviews and self-esteem function to buffer humans from mortality-related anxiety. TMT research has shown that important behaviors are influenced by mortality salience (MS) even when they have no obvious connection to death. However, there has been no attempt to investigate TMT processes in anxious responding. The present research examines t...

We investigated gestural communication in early bilinguals. In particular, we tested which aspects of gestures were “transferred” from a language to another. Though transfer in spoken languages has been studied extensively, transfer in gesture is understudied. Gesture transfer can provide useful information on the cognitive architecture in bilingualism. In this study our focus is on gesture rat...

We present a model based on long-range intra-cortical connections which computes the salience of contours in a visual scene. The model accounts for a number of psychophysical and physiological results on contour salience, and provides a mechanism for several of the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization. In the model, cells lying on smooth contours facilitate each other, and strongly facilitat...