Activation of phonological codes during eye fixations in reading.

Two experiments addressed the issue of whether phonological codes are activated early in a fixation during reading using the fast-priming technique (S. C. Sereno & K. Rayner, 1992). Participants read sentences and, at the beginning of the initial fixation in a target location, a priming letter string was displayed, followed by the target word. Phonological priming was assessed by the difference in the gaze duration on the target word between when the prime was a homophone and when it was a control word equated with the homophone on orthographic similarity to the target. Both experiments demonstrated homophonic priming with prime durations of about 35 ms, but only for high-frequency word primes, indicating that lexicality was guiding the speed of the extraction of phonological codes early in a fixation. Evidence was also obtained for orthographic priming, and the data suggest that orthographic and phonological priming effects interact in a mutually facilitating manner. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is the orthographic/phonological onset a single unit in reading aloud?

Two main theories of visual word recognition have been developed regarding the way orthographic units in printed words map onto phonological units in spoken words. One theory suggests that a string of single letters or letter clusters corresponds to a string of phonemes (Coltheart, 1978; Venezky, 1970), while the other suggests that a string of single letters or letter clusters corresponds to coarser phonological units, for example, onsets and rimes (Treiman & Chafetz, 1987). These theoretical assumptions were critical for the development of coding schemes in prominent computational models of word recognition and reading aloud. In a reading-aloud study, we tested whether the human reading system represents the orthographic/phonological onset of printed words and nonwords as single units or as separate letters/phonemes. Our results, which favored a letter and not an onset-coding scheme, were successfully simulated by the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001). A separate experiment was carried out to further adjudicate between 2 versions of the DRC model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological recoding and orthographic learning: A direct test of the self-teaching hypothesis

According to the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995), word-specific orthographic representations are acquired primarily as a result of the self-teaching opportunities provided by the phonological recoding of novel letter strings. This hypothesis was tested by asking normal second graders to read aloud short texts containing embedded pseudoword targets. Three days later, target spellings were correctly identified more often, named more quickly, and spelled more accurately than alternate homophonic spellings. Experiment 2 examined whether this rapid orthographic learning can be attributed to mere visual exposure to target strings. It was found that viewing the target letter strings under conditions designed to minimize phonological processing significantly attenuated orthographic learning. Experiment 3 went on to show that this reduced orthographic learning was not attributable to alternative nonphonological factors (brief exposure durations or decontextualized presentation). The results of a fourth experiment suggested that the contribution of pure visual exposure to orthographic learning is marginal. It was concluded that phonological recoding is critical to the acquisition of word-specific orthographic representations as proposed by the self-teaching hypothesis.     

Neighborhood effects in visual word recognition: Effects of letter delay and nonword context difficulty.

The role of a target's orthographic neighborhood in visual word recognition was investigated in 2 lexical decision experiments. In both experiments, some stimuli had 1 letter delayed relative to the presentation of the rest of the stimulus. Exp 1 showed that delaying a letter position, which yielded a potentially competitive neighbor, was more costly to target recognition than delaying a position that yielded no neighbors. This effect was strongest when one of these neighbors was of higher frequency than the target itself. Additionally, the effect was reduced for words with a high friendly-to-unfriendly-neighbor ratio (friendly neighbors being those words containing the delayed letter). In Exp 2 the difficulty of the word–nonword discrimination was manipulated by varying the density of the nonwords' neighborhoods. Only when the nonwords had many neighbors at several positions did the word responses show neighborhood competition effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effect of Perceptual Distinctiveness on the Prospective and Retrospective Components of Prospective Memory in Young and Old Adults.

In two experiments, the effect of perceptual distinctiveness of cues on prospective memory performance was examined. Young and older adults completed a visual search task with embedded prospective memory instructions. On each trial, participants were asked to indicate the position of a target letter in a letter string, unless either of two letters previously identified as prospective memory cues was presented. Each prospective cue was associated with a specific response. Perceptual distinctiveness was manipulated by spatially displacing a single letter. The prospective component (successful detection of the cue) and the retrospective memory component (recalling the correct response when a cue is detected) were measured separately. Perceptual displacement of cues modulated performance of the prospective component but not the retrospective component. Young adults successfully detected a larger proportion of cues (prospective component) than older adults. However, there were minimal effects of age and no effect of cue displacement on participants' ability to recall the intention once they detected a cue (retrospective component performance). Results are discussed within the context of current theoretical models of prospective memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonology can help or hurt the perception of print.

Phonological manipulations affect performance in a letter search task that requires only a shallow level of processing. In Experiment 1, phonology reduced accuracy in the letter search task when a pseudohomophone (GAIM) contained a target letter ("i") that was missing in the spelling of its (nonpresented) sound-alike base word (GAME). In Experiment 2, phonology increased accuracy in the letter search task when the target letter was present in both the spelling of the pseudohomophone and the spelling of its sound-alike base word ("m" in GAIM and GAME). In Experiment 3, we showed that the phonology-hurts effect of Experiment 1 is not peculiar to nonword letter strings but generalizes to familiar words. In Experiment 4, we obtained a phonology-hurts effect on correct response times when stimuli were visible until participants responded (stimuli were not masked). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction effects in the lateral visual field: an extension of Bouma's (1970) approach

The recognizability of a letter is impaired by the presence of additional letters. This phenomenon is called lateral masking. Proceeding on the assumption of Bouma (1970) lateral masking can be described in terms of retinal eccentricity of the target letter and the distance between target and flanking stimuli. In this paper, we will address to the question if these kinds of parameters are adequate for describing lateral masking effects. For this purpose, characteristics of the string like its length and its homogenity are varied. The subject's task is to identify the central letter of a tachistoscopically presented string. The targets in the string are flanked both by only x and by different randomly selected letters. Additionally, we varied the length of the string. The data show that these variations influence the strength of the masking effect. It is concluded that a pure sensorical approach is not sufficient for an explanation of lateral masking effects.     

Eye Movements and Phonological Parafoveal Preview: Effects of Reading Skill.

Eye movements of skilled and less skilled readers were monitored as they read sentences containing a target word. The boundary paradigm was used such that when their eyes crossed an invisible boundary location, a preview word changed to the target word. The preview could either be identical to the target word (beach as a preview for beach), a homophone of the target word (beech as a preview for beach), an orthographic control (bench as a preview for beach), or an unrelated consonant string (jfzrp as a preview for beach). Consistent with prior research, skilled readers obtained more preview benefit from the homophone preview than from the orthographic preview. The less skilled readers, however, did not show such an effect. The results indicate that less skilled readers do not use phonological codes to integrate information across eye movements. Indeed, the results also indicate that less skilled readers do not show normal preview benefit effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rhyming ability, phoneme identity, letter–sound knowledge, and the use of orthographic analogy by prereaders.

Two current models of the use of orthographic analogy claim that (a) beginning readers can make orthographic analogies based on rhyming and (b) considerable experience recoding individual letter sequences involving phonemes is a prerequisite. The study tested the first model and had implications for the second model. Rhyming, phoneme identity, letter–sound knowledge, and vocabulary were measured in 66 prereaders with a mean age of 5 years 8 months. Children then received teaching that varied experience with onset and rime and with words with the spelling intact or segmented. The study produced evidence that children with high-prereading skills can make orthographic analogies when beginning to read. However, final phoneme identity, not rhyming, was the best discriminatory between children who read analogy test words and those who did not. The evidence supports a synthesis of the two models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effets de distribution du voisinage orthographique et d'amor?age par répétition masqué.

This research centres on the effect that the orthographic neighbourhood has in the visual recognition of words. Specifically, we studied to what extent orthographic neighbourhood distribution, that is, the number of letter positions allowing formation of at least one neighbour (Pugh, Rexer, Peter, & Katz, 1994), influences the masked repetition priming effect. In a previous study (Mathey, Robert, & Zagar, 2004), interaction between neighbourhood distribution and orthographic priming was obtained in the lexical decision task. The Interactive Activation Model (IA; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981) simulated this interaction. With the orthographic priming effect modified for distribution of the neighbourhood of target words, it was necessary to study whether the repetition priming effect also varied as a function of this indicator. Studying this interaction presents a major theoretical issue in specifying the activating and inhibiting processes presented in the IA model. Simulations were produced to obtain precise model predictions regard regarding the neighbourhood distribution effect in a repetitive priming situation for our experimental material. Target words all had two neighbours that were most frequent. These neighbours were isolated, that is, distributed over two letter positions (e.g.: TAUX/faux-toux), or associated, i.e., concentrated on one single position (e.g., SEAU/beaupeau). Targets were preceded by an identical priming (repetitive priming; e.g.: seau-SEAU) or by controlled priming (e.g., &&&&-SEAU). The simulation results obtained using the IA model show the facilitating effects of neighbourhood distribution and repetitive priming, but no interaction between these factors. The experimental results obtained in a lexical decision task confirm these predictions. Thus, the empirical data replicate the neighbourhood distribution's facilitating effect (Mathey & Zagar, 2000) as well as the facilitating effect of masked repetition (Forster & Davis, 1984). Finally, the most interesting result is that the facilitating effect of repetition is comparable for target words with associated neighbours and target words with isolated neighbours. An explanation of the combined effects of the orthographic neighbourhood and orthographic masked repetition priming, integrating data from literature as well as from the current study, is proposed within the framework of the IA model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Quick, automatic, and general activation of orthographic and phonological representations in young readers

Second through 6th graders were presented with nonword primes (orthographic, pseudohomophone, and control) and target words displayed for durations (30 and 60 ms) that were brief enough to prevent complete processing. Word reading skills were assessed by 3 word and nonword naming tasks. Good readers exhibited more orthographic priming than poor readers at both durations and more pseudohomophone priming at the short duration only. This suggests that good readers activate letter and phonemic information more efficiently than poor readers. Good readers also exhibited an equal amount of priming at both durations, whereas poor readers showed greater priming at the longer duration. This suggests that activation was not under strategic control. Finally, priming was reliable for both high- and low-frequency targets. This suggests that readers activate consistent information regardless of target word characteristics. Thus, quick, automatic, and general activation of orthographic and phonological information in skilled readers results from the precision and redundancy of their lexical representations.     

Previewing the neighborhood: The role of orthographic neighbors as parafoveal previews in reading.

In 2 experiments, a boundary technique was used with parafoveal previews that were identical to a target (e.g., sleet), a word orthographic neighbor (sweet), or an orthographically matched nonword (speet). In Experiment 1, low-frequency words in orthographic pairs were targets, and high-frequency words were previews. In Experiment 2, the roles were reversed. In Experiment 1, neighbor words provided as much preview benefit as identical words and greater benefit than nonwords, whereas in Experiment 2, neighbor words provided no greater preview benefit than nonwords. These results indicate that the frequency of a preview influences the extraction of letter information without setting up appreciable competition between previews and targets. This is consistent with a model of word recognition in which early stages largely depend on excitation of letter information, and competition between lexical candidates becomes important only in later stages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are individual or consecutive letters the unit affected by repetition blindness?

When 2 similar words (e.g., react reach) are briefly sequentially displayed, the 2nd word may be omitted from the report, a phenomenon known as repetition blindness (RB). Previous researchers have suggested that consecutive letters are the unit affected by RB. Six experiments provided new data on orthographic RB. Two letters at the beginning or end of words resulted in RB, as did alternating interior letters (tactile earthly) and 3 letters with different relative positions (arid bird). However, no RB was found with a single final letter (show view). Observed RB may reflect pattern completion because RB for pairs like throat theory was reduced when the nonrepeated letters (eory) were consistent with only a single word. The experiments point to a model of orthographic RB in which both individual letters and letter sequences of length 2 or more play a role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Position and order information in recognition memory.

In three experiments we examined short-term recognition memory for order information. In each, a target string of letters was followed by a test string to which the subject responded "same" or "different." The test string either was identical to the target, or it included a transposition of a single pair of letters. Results were consistent in showing that the closer two transposed letters were to another in the target string, the poorer was the recognition of transposition. A probed recall procedure introduced in Experiment 3 required subjects to identify the serial position in the target string held by the probe letter. This procedure showed that memory for a letter's serial position was distributed over a number of serial positions and that the overlap of such positional uncertainty functions for individual pairs of adjacent items predicted recognition memory for transposition. Uncertainty about position of occurrence appears to determine order information, at least in part, and constitutes a neglected aspect of current theories of serial-position phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orthographic Structure Versus Morphological Structure: Principles of Lexical Organization in a Given Language.

Most models of visual word recognition in alphabetic orthographies assume that words are lexically organized according to orthographic similarity. Support for this is provided by form-priming experiments that demonstrate robust facilitation when primes and targets share similar sequences of letters. The authors examined form-orthographic priming effects in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Hebrew and Arabic have an alphabetic writing system but a Semitic morphological structure. Hebrew morphemic units are composed of noncontiguous phonemic (and letter) sequences in a given word. Results demonstrate that form-priming effects in Hebrew or Arabic are unreliable, whereas morphological priming effects with minimal letter overlap are robust. Hebrew bilingual subjects, by contrast, showed robust form-priming effects with English material, suggesting that Semitic words are lexically organized by morphological rather than orthographic principles. The authors conclude that morphology can constrain lexical organization even in alphabetic orthographies and that visual processing of words is first determined by morphological characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Basic processes in reading: Can functional phonological recoding be blocked?

A widely held view is that phonological processing is always involved in lexical access from print, and is automatic in that it cannot be prevented. This claim was assessed in the context of a priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, repetition priming was observed for both pseudohomophone-word pairs (e.g., brane-brain) and morphologically related word pairs (e.g., marked-mark) in the context of lexical decision. In Experiment 2, subjects searched the prime for the presence of a target letter and then made a lexical decision to a subsequent letter string. Phonological priming from a pseudohomophone was eliminated following letter search of the prime, whereas morphological priming persisted. These results are inconsistent with the claim that a) lexical access from print requires preliminary phonological processing, and b) functional phonological processing cannot be blocked. They are, however, consistent with the conclusion that, for intact skilled readers, lexical access can be accomplished on the basis of orthographic processing alone. These results join a growing body of evidence supporting the claim that there exist numerous points in visual word recognition at which processing can be stopped. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word-based grouping affects the prime-task effect on semantic priming.

Semantic priming between words is reduced or eliminated if a low-level task such as letter search is performed on the prime word (the prime task effect), a finding used to question the automaticity of semantic processing of words. This idea is critically examined in 3 experiments with a new design that allows the search target to occur both inside and outside the prime word. The new design produces the prime task effect (Experiment 1) but shows semantic negative priming when the target letter occurs outside the prime word (Experiments 2 and 3). It is proposed that semantic activation and priming are dissociable and that inhibition and word-based grouping are responsible for reduction of semantic priming in the prime task effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrating information across fixations during reading: The use of orthographic bodies and of exterior letters.

Eye movements were recorded to determine whether the parafoveally visible orthographic body of a bisyllabic target word facilitated recognition during the next target fixation. Eye-movement-contingent display changes revealed part of the target, including its orthographic body, or its beginning letters, when it was parafoveally available, but the full target was visible after it was fixated. Target viewing durations showed no benefit from parafoveal preview of orthographic bodies. Instead, preview benefits derived primarily from the preview of word-initial letters. Examination of oculomotor activity revealed that single target fixations were common when the pretarget word received more than one fixation; conversely, more than one target fixation was common when the pretarget word had received a single fixation. Interword fixation strategies thus affected target viewing, but use of parafoveal target previews was unaffected by these strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perception of familiar stimuli

A model is described for the processing of word-like (regular) and non-word-like (irregular) letter strings in a situation where either type of string may occur. It is proposed that each type of string is processed by specialised routines which are deployed contingently on an initial decision about the regularity of an item. Three experiments involving word/nonword and same/different responses investigate how the processing of a string is affected by the brief exposure of a prior string. It is shown that processing is interfered with less when both strings are of the same degree of regularity than when they are not. The model is revised and extended in the light of the results obtained as well as some theoretical considerations.