The magic word

What’s the Magic Word?

Academic studies on the impact of taboo words on cognition, memory, perception, etc. support the intuitive position that taboo words are at least in part used because they are an effective tool in making meaning understood. What hasn’t been done, to the best of our knowledge, is to look at the effect of taboo words on speech recognition. To this end we have collected data comparing the impact o...

10 Attentional control and the flexible lexical processor: Explorations of the magic moment of word recognition

In studying any behaviour, an initial critical step is to operationalize the targeted behaviour. In the present case, the targeted behaviour is performance on simple word-recognition tasks such as lexical decision and speeded word naming. At one level, this behaviour is deceptively simple to understand. Adult readers have intimate knowledge of this acquired skill. However, as shown in this volu...

The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age

Education has failed to adjust to the massive transformation in Western culture since the rise of electronic media. The shift from the era of the printed book to that of television, with its immediacy and global reach, was prophesied by Marshall McLuhan in his revolutionary Understanding Media, which at its publication in 1964 spoke with visionary force to my generation of college students in t...

Attentional Control and Flexible Lexical Processing: Explorations of the Magic Moment of Word Recognition

Say the Magic Word: A Rhetorical Analysis of Contract Drafting Choices