Orthographic error monitoring in old age: Lexical and sublexical availability during perception and production.

Previous research suggests that older adults suffer declines in producing accurate spellings but retain the ability to accurately detect misspellings. The preservation of perception in the face of impaired production has been used to support a model of aging in which age impairs access to linguistic representations under specific circumstances, while representations themselves remain intact. The current research tests two predictions of this Transmission Deficit Hypothesis (TDH): first, that the differential effect of age on perception and production occurs when tasks are equated on response requirements and underlying representations, and second, that both word and spelling frequency interact to determine the effect of age on performance. Results of two error monitoring tasks supported the predictions of the TDH, demonstrating age-related production impairments that interacted with both word and spelling frequency, but no impairment of older adults' spelling perception, even for low frequency words or spellings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining the Interactivity of Lexical Orthographic and Phonological Processing.

The number and type of connections involving different levels of orthographic and phonological representations differentiate between several models of spoken and visual word recognition. At the sublexical level of processing, Borowsky, Owen, and Fonos (1999) demonstrated evidence for direct processing connections from grapheme representations to phoneme representations (i.e., a sensitivity effect) over and above any bias effects, but not in the reverse direction. Neural network models of visual word recognition implement an orthography to phonology processing route that involves the same connections for processing sublexical and lexical information, and thus a similar pattern of cross-modal effects for lexical stimuli are expected by models that implement this single type of connection (i.e., orthographic lexical processing should directly affect phonological lexical processing, but not in the reverse direction). Furthermore, several models of spoken word perception predict that there should be no direct connections between orthographic representations and phonological representations, regardless of whether the connections are sublexical or lexical... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical precision in skilled readers: Individual differences in masked neighbor priming.

Two experiments investigated the relationship between masked form priming and individual differences in reading and spelling proficiency among university students. Experiment 1 assessed neighbor priming for 4-letter word targets from high- and low-density neighborhoods in 97 university students. The overall results replicated previous evidence of facilitatory neighborhood priming only for low-neighborhood words. However, analyses including measures of reading and spelling proficiency as covariates revealed that better spellers showed inhibitory priming for high-neighborhood words, while poorer spellers showed facilitatory priming. Experiment 2, with 123 participants, replicated the finding of stronger inhibitory neighbor priming in better spellers using 5-letter words and distinguished facilitatory and inhibitory components of priming by comparing neighbor primes with ambiguous and unambiguous partial-word primes (e.g., crow#, cr#wd, crown CROWD). The results indicate that spelling ability is selectively associated with inhibitory effects of lexical competition. The implications for theories of visual word recognition and the lexical quality hypothesis of reading skill are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Morphological Family Size in a Morphologically Rich Language: The Case of Finnish Compared With Dutch and Hebrew.

Finnish has a very productive morphology in which a stem can give rise to several thousand words. This study presents a visual lexical decision experiment addressing the processing consequences of the huge productivity of Finnish morphology. The authors observed that in Finnish words with larger morphological families elicited shorter response latencies. However, in contrast to Dutch and Hebrew, it is not the complete morphological family of a complex Finnish word that codetermines response latencies but only the subset of words directly derived from the complex word itself. Comparisons with parallel experiments using translation equivalents in Dutch and Hebrew showed substantial cross-language predictivity of family size between Finnish and Dutch but not between Finnish and Hebrew, reflecting the different ways in which the Hebrew and Finnish morphological systems contribute to the semantic organization of concepts in the mental lexicon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lateralized Lexical Decision in Schizophrenia: Hemispheric Specialization and Interhemispheric Lexicality Priming.

Reports of left-hemisphere dysfunction and abnormal interhemispheric transfer in schizophrenia are mixed. The authors used a unified paradigm, the lateralized lexical decision task, to assess hemispheric specialization in word recognition, hemispheric error monitoring, and interhemispheric transfer in male, right-handed participants with schizophrenia (n=34) compared with controls (n=20). Overall, performance and error monitoring were worse in patients. However, patients like controls showed left-hemisphere superiority for lexical processing and right-hemisphere superiority for error monitoring. Only patients showed selective-interhemispheric lexicality priming for accuracy, in which performance improved when the lexical status of target and distractor stimuli presented to each hemifield was congruent. Results suggest that schizophrenia is associated with impaired monitoring and with increased interhemispheric automatic information transfer rather than with changed hemispheric specialization for language or error monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orthographic analogies and early reading: Evidence from a multiple clue word paradigm.

Two experiments using a variation of the clue word analogy task (Goswami, 1986) explored whether children can make orthographic analogies when given multiple clue words, beyond the known effects of purely phonological activation. In Experiment 1, 42 children (mean age 6 years and 8 months) were first taught 3 “clue” words (e.g., fail, mail, jail) and then shown target words sharing orthographic and phonological rimes (e.g., hail), phonological rimes (e.g., veil), orthographic and phonological vowel digraphs (e.g., wait), phonological vowel digraphs (e.g., vein), or unrelated controls (e.g., bard). All word types were advantaged at posttest over unrelated controls. A small additional advantage for orthographic and phonological rimes over phonological rimes was evident in by-participant analysis. Finally, regression analysis showed a specific relationship between onset-rime phonological awareness and orthographic rime clue word task transfer. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with 30 children (M age = 7 years, 0 months) and added a distinct group of children taught multiple clue words sharing vowel digraphs (e.g., gait, maim, maid). Results showed advantages for all words over unrelated controls and a small additional advantage for orthographic and phonological vowel digraphs over phonological vowel digraphs in the by-participant analysis. Overall, results suggest that some young children do have the ability to make orthographic analogies when given multiple exemplars but that most improvement in target word reading reflects purely phonological activation. Practical steps for identifying genuine analogy use in a subset of children are thus described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical exposure and word-form encoding in 1.5-year-olds.

In this study, 1.5-year-olds were taught a novel word. Some children were familiarized with the word's phonological form before learning the word's meaning. Fidelity of phonological encoding was tested in a picture-fixation task using correctly pronounced and mispronounced stimuli. Only children with additional exposure in familiarization showed reduced recognition performance given slight mispronunciations relative to correct pronunciations; children with fewer exposures did not. Mathematical modeling of vocabulary exposure indicated that children may hear thousands of words frequently enough for accurate encoding. The results provide evidence compatible with partial failure of phonological encoding at 19 months of age, demonstrate that this limitation in learning does not always hinder word recognition, and show the value of infants' word-form encoding in early lexical development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In Search of Perceptual Priming in a Semantic Classification Task.

Four experiments tested for perceptual priming for written words in a semantic categorization task. Repetition priming was obtained for low-frequency words when unrelated categorizations were performed at study and test (Experiment 1), but it was not orthographically mediated given that written-to-written and spoken-to-written word priming was equivalent (Experiments 2 and 3). Furthermore, no priming was obtained between pictures and words (Experiment 4), suggesting that the nonorthographic priming was largely phonological rather than semantic. These results pose a challenge to standard perceptual theories of priming that should expect orthographic priming when words are presented in a visual format at study and test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonword Repetition Priming in Lexical Decision Reverses as a Function of Study Task and Speed Stress.

The authors argue that nonword repetition priming in lexical decision is the net result of 2 opposing processes. First, repeating nonwords in the lexical decision task results in the storage of a memory trace containing the interpretation that the letter string is a nonword; retrieval of this trace leads to an increase in performance for repeated nonwords. Second, nonword repetition results in increased familiarity, making the nonword more "wordlike," leading to a decrease in performance. Consistent with this dual-process account, Experiment 1 showed a facilitatory effect for nonwords studied in a lexical decision task but an inhibitory effect for nonwords studied in a letter-height task. Experiment 2 showed inhibitory nonword repetition priming for participants tested under speed-stress instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orthographic neighborhood effects in lexical decision: The effects of nonword orthographic neighborhood size.

The effects of large neighborhoods (neighborhood size) and of higher frequency neighbors (neighborhood frequency) were examined as a function of nonword neighborhood size in lexical decision tasks. According to the multiple read-out model (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996), neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects should vary systematically as a function of nonword neighborhood size. In these experiments, the nonword context was more extensively manipulated than in previous studies, providing a more complete test of the model's predictions. In addition, simulations were conducted examining the model's ability to account for the facilitatory neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects observed in these experiments. The results suggest that the model overestimates the role of inhibition in the orthographic processing of English words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress Versus Coarticulation: Toward an Integrated Approach to Explicit Speech Segmentation.

Although word stress has been hailed as a powerful speech-segmentation cue, the results of 5 cross-modal fragment priming experiments revealed limitations to stress-based segmentation. Specifically, the stress pattern of auditory primes failed to have any effect on the lexical decision latencies to related visual targets. A determining factor was whether the onset of the prime was coarticulated with the preceding speech fragment. Uncoarticulated (i.e., concatenated) primes facilitated priming. Coarticulated ones did not. However, when the primes were presented in a background of noise, the pattern of results reversed, and a strong stress effect emerged: Stress-initial primes caused more pruning than non-initial-stress primes, regardless of the coarticulatory cues. The results underscore the role of coarticulation in the segmentation of clear speech and that of stress in impoverished listening conditions. More generally, they call for an integrated and signal-contingent approach to speech segmentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feedback consistency effects in visual and auditory word recognition: Where do we stand after more than a decade?

The role of phonology-to-spelling consistency (i.e., feedback consistency) was investigated in 3 lexical decision experiments in both the visual and auditory modalities in French and English. No evidence for a feedback consistency effect was found in the visual modality, either in English or in French, despite the fact that consistency was manipulated for different kinds of units (onsets and rimes). In contrast, robust feedback consistency effects were obtained in the auditory lexical decision task in both English and French when exactly the same items that produced a null effect in the visual modality were used. Neural network simulations are presented to show that previous demonstrations of feedback consistency effects in the visual modality can be simulated with a model that is not sensitive to feedback consistency, suggesting that these effects might have come from various confounds. These simulations, together with the authors' results, suggest that there are no feedback consistency effects in the visual modality. In contrast, such effects are clearly present in the auditory modality. Given that orthographic information is absent from current models of spoken word recognition, the present findings present a major challenge to these models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Covert operations: Orthographic recoding as a basis for repetition priming in word identification.

When a word is generated from a semantic cue, coincident orthographic visualization of that word may cause priming on a subsequent perceptual identification test. A task was introduced that required subjects to visualize the orthographic pattern of auditorily presented words. When used at study, this task produced a pattern of priming similar to that produced by a generate study task. When used at test, equal priming on the orthographic task was produced by read and generate study tasks but not by a generate study task that failed to invite orthographic visualization. Priming on perceptually based word identification tests that results from a generate study episode may be largely due to orthographic recoding of the target rather than to conceptual processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming processes in the Simon task: More evidence from the lexical decision task for a third route in the Simon effect.

Recently, it was proposed that the Simon effect would result not only from two interfering processes, as classical dual-route models assume, but from three processes. It was argued that priming from the spatial code to the nonspatial code might facilitate the identification of the nonspatial stimulus feature in congruent Simon trials. In the present study, the authors provide evidence that the identification of the nonspatial information can be facilitated by the activation of an associated spatial code. In three experiments, participants first associated centrally presented animal and fruit pictures with spatial responses. Subsequently, participants decided whether laterally presented letter strings were words (animal, fruit, or other words) or nonwords; stimulus position could be congruent or incongruent to the associated spatial code. As hypothesized, animal and fruit words were identified faster at congruent than at incongruent stimulus positions from the association phase. The authors conclude that the activation of the spatial code spreads to the nonspatial code, resulting in facilitated stimulus identification in congruent trials. These results speak to the assumption of a third process involved in the Simon task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sandwich priming: A method for overcoming the limitations of masked priming by reducing lexical competitor effects.

An orthographically similar masked nonword prime facilitates responding in a lexical decision task (Forster & Davis, 1984). Recently, this masked priming paradigm has been used to evaluate models of orthographic coding—models that attempt to quantify prime-target similarity. One general finding is that priming effects often do not occur when prime-target similarity is moderate, a result that the authors interpret as being due to uncontrolled effects of lexical inhibition. In the present research, a new version of the masked priming paradigm, sandwich priming, was introduced in an effort to minimize the impact of lexical inhibition. Masked sandwich priming involves briefly presenting the target itself prior to the presentation of each prime. Results indicate that the new paradigm was successful. The predicted priming effects were observed for Guerrera and Forster’s (2008) T-All primes (e.g., avacitno–VACATION) and for primes differing from their targets at 3 letter positions (e.g., coshure–CAPTURE)—effects that are not found with the conventional masked priming paradigm. In addition to demonstrating the usefulness of the sandwich priming technique, these results also support the assumption that inhibitory processes play an important role in lexical processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syntactic constraints in the retrieval of homophone orthography.

In this experiment, syntactic constraints on the retrieval of orthography were investigated using homophones embedded in sentence contexts. Participants typed auditorily presented sentences that included a contextually appropriate homophone that either shared part of speech with its homophone competitor (i.e., was syntactically unambiguous) or had a different part of speech (was syntactically ambiguous). Each homophone was preceded by an unrelated word or a prime; primes were orthographically related to the competitor and shared or differed from the competitor’s part of speech. For syntactically unambiguous homophones, more errors occurred overall, and priming increased errors independent of the prime’s part of speech. For syntactically ambiguous homophones, priming occurred only following primes that shared part of speech with the competitor. These results demonstrate that written homophone errors can occur during lemma retrieval or during orthographic encoding, with the particular stage depending on the syntactic ambiguity of the homophone to be produced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Masked priming effects with syllabic neighbors in a lexical decision task.

Four lexical decision experiments using a masked priming paradigm were conducted to analyze whether the previous presentation of a syllabic neighbor (a word sharing the same 1st syllable) influences recognition performance. The results showed an inhibitory effect of more frequent syllabic primes and some facilitation of nonword syllabic primes (Experiments 1-3). When monosyllabic pairs were used (Experiment 3), no priming effects of the 2 initial letters were found. Finally, when using only syllables as primes, latencies to words were shorter when preceded by primes that corresponded to the 1st syllable than by primes that contained 1 letter more or less than the lst syllable (Experiment 4). Results are interpreted using activation models that take into account a syllabic level of representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Language status and hemispheric involvement in reading: Evidence from trilingual Arabic speakers tested in Arabic, Hebrew, and English.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 24(6) of Neuropsychology (see record 2010-22445-001). The Arabic text appearing in the Appendix on page 254 of Table C1 did not reproduce accurately. The corrected table appears in the erratum.] This study explores the effects of language status on hemispheric involvement in lexical decision. The authors looked at the responses of native Arabic speakers in Arabic (L1 for reading) and in two second languages (L2): Hebrew, which is similar to L1 in morphological structure, and English, which is very different from L1. Two groups of Arabic speakers performed lateralized lexical decision tasks in the three languages, using unilateral presentations and bilateral presentations. These paradigms allowed us to infer both hemispheric specialization and interhemispheric communication in the three languages, and the effects of language status (native vs. nonnative) and similarity on hemispheric patterns of responses. In general the authors show an effect of language status in the right visual field (RVF), reflecting the greater facility of the left hemisphere (LH) in recognizing words in the participant's native Arabic than in their other languages. The participants revealed similar patterns of interhemispheric integration across the languages, with more integration occurring for words than for nonwords. Both hemispheres revealed sensitivity to morphological complexity, a pattern similar to that of native Hebrew readers and different from that of native English readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Masked priming with orthographic neighbors: A test of the lexical competition assumption.

In models of visual word identification that incorporate inhibitory competition among activated lexical units, a word's higher frequency neighbors will be the word's strongest competitors. Preactivation of these neighbors by a prime is predicted to delay the word's identification. Using the masked priming paradigm (K. I. Forster & C. Davis, 1984, J. Segui and J. Grainger (1990) reported that, consistent with this prediction, a higher frequency neighbor prime delayed the responses to a lower frequency target, whereas a lower frequency neighbor prime did not delay the responses to a higher frequency target. In the present experiments, using English stimuli, it was found that this pattern held only when the primes and targets had few neighbors; when the primes and targets had many neighbors, lower frequency primes delayed responses to higher frequency targets essentially as much as higher frequency primes delayed responses to lower frequency targets. Several possible explanations for these findings are discussed along with their theoretical implications. Considered together, the results are most consistent with activation-based accounts of the masked priming effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)