Orthographic processing in visual word recognition: A multiple read-out model.

A model of orthographic processing is described that postulates read-out from different information dimensions, determined by variable response criteria set on these dimensions. Performance in a perceptual identification task is simulated as the percentage of trials on which a noisy criterion set on the dimension of single word detector activity is reached. Two additional criteria set on the dimensions of total lexical activity and time from stimulus onset are hypothesized to be operational in the lexical decision task. These additional criteria flexibly adjust to changes in stimulus material and task demands. thus accounting for strategic influences on performance in this task. The model unifies results obtained in response-limited and data-limited paradigms and helps resolve a number of inconsistencies in the experimental literature that cannot be accommodated by other current models of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of misoriented words and letter strings.

In Exp I, 8 undergraduates were presented with English words transformed in any of 4 combinations of rotation and distortion of spatial relationships between letters, and recognition time was measured. Both misorientation and distortion of relationships slowed down recognition, and their effects were additive. A similar effect of transformation was also found for strings of unrelated letters (Exp II, 10 undergraduates). With the word stimuli, Ss were given different amounts of information about the transformation prior to presentation. Prior information reduced the differences between mean processing times for different transformations but did not change their ordinal relationships. Information about order of letters was more helpful than information about orientation. The time to recognize a transformed word was positively related to the number of letters in the word, and the effect of the number of letters interacted with the type of transformation. Results support the hypothesis that the process of normalizing a misoriented word or nonword operates on it as a single unit rather than on each letter separately. (French summary) (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence against the computation of abstract letter identities in visual processing.

Conducted 2 studies conceptually similar to the study of D. Besner et al (see record 1985-05766-001) in which letter strings were reorganized into sets where the single letters that were different were phonologically similar (e.g., G vs C) or dissimilar (e.g., G vs K). Latencies for same–different decisions about mixed-case letter strings were faster when the different letters were phonologically dissimilar. Results suggested skilled readers access name codes of individual letters in making their speeded classifications. In the present studies with 16 undergraduates, phonological similarity was manipulated in either the 1st or 4th letter of a mixed-case 4-letter string. A similarity effect was found when the 1st letter was varied. Results are not consistent with the view that abstract letter identities are computed in the course of same–different decisions about simultaneously presented mixed-case displays. (French abstract) (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syllables and bigrams: Orthographic redundancy and syllabic units affect visual word recognition at different processing levels.

Over the last decade, there has been increasing evidence for syllabic processing during visual word recognition. If syllabic effects prove to be independent from orthographic redundancy, this would seriously challenge the ability of current computational models to account for the processing of polysyllabic words. Three experiments are presented to disentangle effects of the frequency of syllabic units and orthographic segments in lexical decision. In Experiment 1 the authors obtained an inhibitory syllable frequency effect that was unaffected by the presence or absence of a bigram trough at the syllable boundary. In Experiments 2 and 3 an inhibitory effect of initial syllable frequency but a facilitative effect of initial bigram frequency emerged when manipulating 1 of the 2 measures and controlling for the other in Spanish words starting with consonant-vowel syllables. The authors conclude that effects of syllable frequency and letter-cluster frequency are independent and arise at different processing levels of visual word recognition. Results are discussed within the framework of an interactive activation model of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye-fixation behavior, lexical storage, and visual word recognition in a split processing model.

Some of the implications of a model of visual word recognition in which processing is conditioned by the anatomical splitting of the visual field between the two hemispheres of the brain are explored. The authors investigate the optimal processing of visually presented words within such an architecture, and, for a realistically sized lexicon of English, characterize a computationally optimal fixation point in reading. They demonstrate that this approach motivates a range of behavior observed in reading isolated words and text, including the optimal viewing position and its relationship with the preferred viewing location, the failure to fixate smaller words, asymmetries in hemisphere-specific processing, and the priority given to the exterior letters of words. The authors also show that split architectures facilitate the uptake of all the letter-position information necessary for efficient word recognition and that this information may be less specific than is normally assumed. A split model of word recognition captures a range of behavior in reading that is greater than that covered by existing models of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orthographic, phonological, and articulatory contributions to masked letter and word priming.

A series of experiments assessed masked priming for letters and words that are visually similar (SIM) and dissimilar (DIS) in upper- and lowercase formats. For letters, robust DIS priming was obtained in a naming task, but this priming did not extend to a variety of non-naming tasks. For words, robust DIS priming was obtained in both naming and non-naming tasks. SIM letter and word priming extended to all tasks, but the effects were generally small for letters. The restricted set of conditions for DIS letter priming suggests that this priming is mediated by phonological-articulatory processes, and the generality of DIS word priming argues that abstract orthographic codes mediate these effects. Consistent with this conclusion, priming between homophones (for both letters and words) was found in a naming task, but little word homophone priming was obtained in a lexical decision task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orthographic neighbourhood effects in parallel distributed processing models.

Studied the speed of visual word recognition in orthographic neighborhoods. In this paper, several statistical analyses of error scores from parallel distributed models revealed that low frequency words with large neighborhoods had lower orthographic, phonological, and cross-entropy error scores than low frequency words with small neighborhoods; and that low frequency words with higher frequency neighbors had lower error scores than low frequency words without higher frequency neighbors. According to these models then, processing should be more rapid for low frequency words with large neighborhoods and for low frequency words with higher frequency neighbors. (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)     

Types and tokens in visual letter perception.

Five experiments demonstrate that in briefly presented displays, subjects have difficulty distinguishing repeated instances of a letter or digit (multiple tokens of the same type). When subjects were asked to estimate the numerosity of a display, reports were lower for displays containing repeated letters, for example, DDDD, than for displays containing distinct letters, for example, NRVT. This homogeneity effect depends on the common visual form of adjacent letters. A distinct homogeneity effect, one that depends on the repetition of abstract letter identities, was also found: When subjects were asked to report the number of As and Es in a display, performance was poorer on displays containing two instances of a target letter, one appearing in uppercase and the other in lowercase, than on displays containing one of each target letter. This effect must be due to the repetition of identities, because visual form is not repeated in these mixed-case displays. Further experiments showed that this effect was not influenced by the context surrounding the target letters, and that it can be tied to limitations in attentional processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Case mixing and the task-sensitive disruption of lexical processing.

MiXeD-cAsE stimuli are often used in reading research to investigate which characteristics of a word's visual form are important to its speed of processing. In this article, the effects of case mixing on a variety of lexical tasks was examined. Lexical decision was found to be more disrupted by case mixing than was word naming or semantic categorization. However, where word naming was shown to be purely lexical, it too was affected to a greater extent than categorization. Case mixing and word frequency interacted in sublexical naming but were additive in lexical naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization. Case mixing did not interact with spelling-to-sound regularity or eradicate homophone and pseudohomophone effects. It is concluded that case mixing disrupts both early letter coding and a familiarity check mechanism (D. Besner & R. S. McCann, 1987). Semantic and syntactic processing continues normally following the disrupted production of abstract letter codes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic facilitation of lexical access during sentence processing.

In three experiments we investigated the effect of a sentence context on naming time for a target word. Contexts were presented by using a rapid serial visual presentation; subjects named the last word of the sentence. In the first two experiments, facilitation was observed for a fully congruent context containing a subject and verb that were weakly related to the target word. No facilitation was observed when either the subject or verb was replaced with a more neutral word. In the third experiment, the fully congruent contexts were modified either to preserve or to disrupt the original relation between the subject and verb. Facilitation was observed in both conditions. The full pattern of results suggests that a combination of lexical items can prime a target word in the absence of priming by any of the lexical items individually. This combination priming is not dependent upon the overall meaning of the sentence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrative priming occurs rapidly and uncontrollably during lexical processing.

Lexical priming, whereby a prime word facilitates recognition of a related target word (e.g., nurse → doctor), is typically attributed to association strength, semantic similarity, or compound familiarity. Here, the authors demonstrate a novel type of lexical priming that occurs among unassociated, dissimilar, and unfamiliar concepts (e.g., horse → doctor). Specifically, integrative priming occurs when a prime word can be easily integrated with a target word to create a unitary representation. Across several manipulations of timing (stimulus onset asynchrony) and list context (relatedness proportion), lexical decisions for the target word were facilitated when it could be integrated with the prime word. Moreover, integrative priming was dissociated from both associative priming and semantic priming but was comparable in terms of both prevalence (across participants) and magnitude (within participants). This observation of integrative priming challenges present models of lexical priming, such as spreading activation, distributed representation, expectancy, episodic retrieval, and compound cue models. The authors suggest that integrative priming may be explained by a role activation model of relational integration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theoretical analysis of the cognitive processing of lexical and pictorial stimuli: Reading, naming, and visual and conceptual comparisons.

This article reviews the research literature on the differences between word reading and picture naming. A theory for the visual and cognitive processing of pictures and words is then introduced. The theory accounts for slower naming of pictures than reading of words. Reading aloud involves a fast, grapheme-to-phoneme transformation process, whereas picture naming involves two additional processes; (a) determining the meaning of the pictorial stimulus and (b) finding a name for the pictorial stimulus. We conducted a reading-naming experiment, and the time to achieve (a) and (b) was determined to be approximately 160 ms. On the basis of data from a second experiment, we demonstrated that there is no significant difference in time to visually compare two pictures or two words when size of the stimuli is equated. There is no difference in time to make the two types of cross-modality conceptual comparisons (picture first, then word, or word first, then picture). The symmetry of the visual and conceptual comparison results supports the hypothesis that the coding of the mind is neither intrinsically linguistic nor imagistic, but rather it is abstract. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition: A dissociation of lexical and semantic processing.

These experiments illustrate 2 new dissociations in word-recognition tasks. In one, relatedness facilitated lexical decision but impaired searching for a common letter in the same pairs of words (a cross-over interaction between relatedness and task). In the other dissociation, lexicality facilitated performance (words processed faster than nonwords) while relatedness impaired performance (related words processed slower than unrelated words) in the letter search task. Two classes of explanation are discussed. In the first, the perception of relatedness serves to focus attention to the word level, thereby making explicit letter level processing more difficult and/or increasing the number of competing lexical entries via priming. In the second, spreading inhibition makes related words more difficult to process than unrelated words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using cross-modal lexical decision tasks to investigate sentence processing.

Recent investigations of sentence processing have used the cross-modal lexical decision task to show that the antecedent of a phonologically empty noun phrase (specifically, WH-trace) is reactivated at the trace position. G. McKoon et al (see record 1995-04309-001) claimed that (1) a design feature concerning the choice of related and unrelated targets is a possible confound in this work and (2) the conclusions drawn from this previous research are therefore called into question. These claims are considered in light of both the McKoon et al experimental findings and the results of the J. L. Nicol et al experiments in which linguistic materials are tested. Nicol et al argue that their results may be due to the nature of their materials, and that a follow-up experiment reported by McKoon and R. Ratcliff (see record 1995-04308-001) used a technique that is not comparable to the cross-modal lexical decision task. It is concluded that current evidence supports the claim that structural information is used during on-line sentence processing and that the cross-modal technique is sensitive to this. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bihemispheric processing of redundant bilateral lexical information

Cerebral asymmetries in lexical ambiguity resolution were studied. In 2 experiments, targets related to the dominant and subordinate meanings of ambiguous word primes were presented for lexical decision after a 750-ms stimulus onset asynchrony. Experiment 1 compared presentation of target words to the left visual field/right-hemisphere (LVF/RH), to the right visual field/left-hemisphere (RVF/LH), or after redundant bilateral visual field (BVF) presentation. Experiment 2 examined unilateral priming in the absence of a BVF condition. On unilateral trials, priming was observed for dominant meanings in both the LVF/RH and RVF/LH, whereas subordinate priming was obtained only in the RVF/LH. These results suggest a possible role of hemispheric interaction in the availability of ambiguous word meanings. BVF performance evidenced a bilateral redundancy gain and priming that resembled that obtained on RVF/LH trials. Additional BVF analyses were not consistent with a strict race model interpretation and appear to implicate hemispheric cooperation in the bihemisperic processing of lexical information.     

Attentional resource demands of visual word recognition in naming and lexical decisions.

Attentional demands of lexical access were assessed with dual-task methodology. Ss performed an auditory probe task alone (single-task) or combined (dual-task) with either a lexical decision or a naming task. In Exp 1, probe performance showed a decrement from single- to dual-task conditions during recognition of words in both lexical decision and naming tasks. In addition, decrements of probe performance were larger during processing of low-frequency compared with high-frequency words in both of the word recognition tasks. Exp 2 showed that the time course of frequency-sensitive demands was similar across lexical decision and naming tasks and that attention is required early in the word recognition sequence. The results support the assumption that lexical access is both frequency sensitive and attention demanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parallel pattern processing and visual agnosia.

Conducted 3 visual-search experiments to examine parallel pattern processing in a man with visual agnosia, who suffered a stroke at age 61 yrs. The authors examined "search for targets" as defined by (1) the combination of features relative to homogeneous distractors, (2) the combination of features relative to heterogeneous distractors, and (3) a single feature difference relative to the distractors. The patient's performance was compared with that of 2 control groups: 10 young (aged 20–36 yrs) and 6 age-matched non-brain damaged controls (aged 63–68 yrs). The patient showed normal search functions for single-feature targets and for combined-feature targets among heterogeneous distractors. The relations between the patient's agnosia and his problem in the parallel grouping of form conjunctions are discussed. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional orienting within visual field in a lexical decision task.

The influence of spatial attention on lexical decisions to lateralized target letter-strings appearing either along with a distractor (Experiment 1) or in an otherwise empty field (Experiments 2–6) was examined. Attentional orienting was controlled by peripheral (Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 6) and central (Experiments 4–5) cuing methods. Manipulations of spatial attention, including cue validity and cue–target stimulus onset asynchrony, were combined with manipulations of word frequency in Experiments 3-6. All the attentional manipulations were effective, but they did not modify the right visual field advantage in word performance, In addition, the attentional effects did not interact with either the presence or absence of distractors or with stimulus familiarity. Implications of these results regarding the influence of spatial attention (the posterior attention system) on word processing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)