Masked repetition and phonological priming in picture naming

We report a series of picture naming experiments in which target pictures were primed by briefly presented masked words. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the prior presentation of the same word prime (e.g., rose-ROSE) facilitates picture naming independently of the target's name frequency. In Experiment 2, primes that were homophones of picture targets (e.g., rows-ROSE) also produced facilitatory effects compared with unrelated controls, but priming was significantly larger for targets with low-frequency names relative to targets with high-frequency names. In Experiment 3, primes that were higher frequency homophones of picture targets produced facilitatory effects compared with identical primes. These results are discussed in relation to different accounts of the effects of masked priming in current models of picture naming.     

Testing for lexical competition during reading: Fast priming with orthographic neighbors.

Recent studies have found that masked word primes that are orthographic neighbors of the target inhibit lexical decision latencies (Davis & Lupker, 2006; Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, 2008), consistent with the predictions of lexical competition models of visual word identification (e.g., Grainger & Jacobs, 1996). In contrast, using the fast priming paradigm (Sereno & Rayner, 1992), orthographically similar primes produced facilitation in a reading task (H. Lee, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 1999; Y. Lee, Binder, Kim, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1999). Experiment 1 replicated this facilitation effect using orthographic neighbor primes. In Experiment 2, neighbor primes and targets were presented in different cases (e.g., SIDE–tide); in this situation, the facilitation effect disappeared. However, nonword neighbor primes (e.g., KIDE–tide) still significantly facilitated reading of targets (Experiment 3). Taken together, these results suggest that it is possible to explain the priming effects from word neighbor primes in fast priming experiments in terms of the interactions between the inhibitory and facilitory processes embodied in lexical competition models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Event perception and the word repetition effect.

Five experiments examined repetition effects on tachistoscopic word identification with masked and unmasked primes varying in lag (to the targets) and word frequency. Qualitative differences in lag effects were found between masked and unmasked primes, with only unmasked primes producing long-lasting repetition effects. Masked primes facilitated performance under conditions in which subjects did not discriminate the presence of prime letter strings; unmasked primes only facilitated target identification when there were visual cues segmenting primes from targets. These qualitative differences between masked and unmasked primes were attributed to effects occurring within a perceptual event (with masked primes) relative to those occurring across events (with unmasked primes). The relevance of the data for understanding both the word repetition effect and event perception in reading is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Specific-word frequency is not all that counts in speech production: Comments on Caramazza, Costa, et al. (2001) and new experimental data.

A. Caramazza, A. Costa, M. Miozzo, and Y. Bi (2001) reported a series of experiments demonstrating that the ease of producing a word depends only on the frequency of that specific word but not on the frequency of a homophone twin. A. Caramazza, A. Costa, et al. concluded that homophones have separate word form representations and that the absence of frequency-inheritance effects for homophones undermines an important argument in support of 2-stage models of lexical access, which assume that syntactic (lemma) representations mediate between conceptual and phonological representations. The authors of this article evaluate the empirical basis of this conclusion, report 2 experiments demonstrating a frequency-inheritance effect, and discuss other recent evidence. It is concluded that homophones share a common word form and that the distinction between lemmas and word forms should be upheld. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming and attentional control of lexical and sublexical pathways during naming.

A modified priming task was used to investigate whether skilled readers are able to adjust the degree to which lexical and sublexical information contribute to naming. On each trial, participants named 5 low-frequency exception word primes or 5 nonword primes before a target. The low-frequency exception word primes should have produced a greater dependence on lexical information, whereas the nonword primes should have produced a greater dependence on sublexical information. Across 4 experiments, the effects of lexicality, regularity, frequency, and imageability were all modulated in predictable ways on the basis of the notion that the primes directed attention to specific processing pathways. It is argued that these results are consistent with an attentional control hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word identification in reading proceeds from spelling to sound to meaning.

Van Orden (1987) reported that false positive errors in a categorization task are elevated for homophonic foils (e.g., {hare} for {a part of the human body}). Two new experiments replicate this finding and extend it to nonword homophone foils (e.g., {sute} for {an article of clothing}). False positive errors to nonword homophone foils substantially exceed false positive errors to nonhomophonic nonword spelling controls, showing that the phonological characteristics of the nonword foils are critical. Because nonwords are not represented in the lexicon, this new result implicates computed phonological codes as a source of the categorization errors. Additionally, in each of two experiments, matched word and nonword homophones produced virtually identical error rates. If stimulus nonword homophones are viewed as extremely unfamiliar words, compared with the relatively familiar stimulus word homophones, then our failure to observe an effect of stimulus familiarity strengthens the case that phonological coding plays a role in the identification of all printed words. The fact that the results are obtained in a categorization task that requires reading for meaning (rather than a lexical decision task) makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that phonological mediation plays a role in normal reading of text for meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Establishing a time-line of word recognition: evidence from eye movements and event-related potentials

The average duration of eye fixations in reading places constraints on the time for lexical processing. Data from event related potential (ERP) studies of word recognition can illuminate stages of processing within a single fixation on a word. In the present study, high and low frequency regular and exception words were used as targets in an eye movement reading experiment and a high-density electrode ERP lexical decision experiment. Effects of lexicality (words vs pseudowords vs consonant strings), word frequency (high vs low frequency) and word regularity (regular vs exception spelling-sound correspondence) were examined. Results suggest a very early time-course for these aspects of lexical processing within the context of a single eye fixation.     

Masked inhibitory priming in English: Evidence for lexical inhibition.

Predictions derived from the interactive activation (IA) model were tested in 3 experiments using the masked priming technique in the lexical decision task. Experiment 1 showed a strong effect of prime lexicality: Classifications of target words were facilitated by orthographically related nonword primes (relative to unrelated nonword primes) but were inhibited by orthographically related word primes (relative to unrelated word primes). Experiment 2 confirmed IA's prediction that inhibitory priming effects are greater when the prime and target share a neighbor. Experiment 3 showed a minimal effect of target word neighborhood size (N) on inhibitory priming but a trend toward greater inhibition when nonword foils were high-N than when they were low-N. Simulations of 3 different versions of the IA model showed that the best fit to the data is produced when lexical inhibition is selective and when masking leads to reset of letter activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of word association and meaning frequency in a cross-modal lexical decision task: Is the priming due to "semantic" activation?

Two experiments examined the effects of priming by ambiguous, auditorily presented word primes. In related conditions, primes were followed by either associatively related or semantically related but associatively unrelated targets. When the targets were presented at prime offset (Exp 1), priming effects were observed only for associatively related targets, independent of meaning frequency (i.e., whether the target was related to the dominant or subordinate meaning of the ambiguous prime). When the targets were presented after a 700 msec delay (Exp 2), however, priming effects were observed only for targets related to the prime's dominant meaning, regardless of the nature of the prime-target relation. These results raise the strong possibility that previously reported differences in the nature of priming effects that had been ascribed to meaning frequency might actually be due to differences in associative strength. These results are discussed in terms of J. A. Fodor's (1983; 1990) "anti-semantic" modularity view. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

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)     

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)     

Visual lexical access is initially phonological: 2. Evidence from phonological priming by homophones and pseudohomophones.

Seven experiments were conducted that examined phonological and orthographic priming of naming using three- and four-field masking procedures with prolonged targets. Experiments 1–3 found significant phonological priming by homophones (TOWED–toad) that was independent of prime identifiability and prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 30, 60, or 250 ms). Subsequent experiments found significant phonological priming by pseudohomophones (TODE–toad) that was similarly independent of prime identifiability and SOA. Collectively, the limited effects of orthographic control primes (TOLD–toad, TODS–toad) and the pronounced and orthographically independent effects of phonological primes suggest (a) a leading role in visual word perception for a fast-acting, automatic, assembled phonology, and (b) a phonological basis, rather than an abstract graphemic basis, for the processing equivalency of letter variations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 23(5) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2008-09898-001). On page 854, two Hebrew words are missing from Appendix F. The corrected Appendix appears with the erratum.] All Hebrew words are composed of 2 interwoven morphemes: a triconsonantal root and a phonological word pattern. The lexical representations of these morphemic units were examined using masked priming. When primes and targets shared an identical word pattern, neither lexical decision nor naming of targets was facilitated. In contrast, root primes facilitated both lexical decisions and naming of target words that were derived from these roots. This priming effect proved to be independent of meaning similarity because no priming effects were found when primes and targets were semantically but not morphologically related. These results suggest that Hebrew roots are lexical units whereas word patterns are not. A working model of lexical organization in Hebrew is offered on the basis of these results. (A correction concerning this article appears in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1997, Vol 23(5), 1189–1191. On page 854 of the current issue, two Hebrew words are missing from Appendix F. The corrected Appendix appears in this correction.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of lexicality and distinctiveness on repetition blindness.

The repetition blindness (RB) paradigm developed by K. M. Arnell and P. Jolic?ur (1997) was used to examine effects of lexicality (word vs. nonword target pairs) and target distinctiveness on RB. Distinctiveness was manipulated by having both targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or only the first target (Experiment 3) brighter than nontarget items. All 3 experiments demonstrated strong RB for word targets but no RB for nonword targets. This confirms that RB depends on pre-existing memory representations. In fact, there was repetition facilitation for nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3. These experiments also demonstrated that RB is reduced when targets are distinctive. This finding is better understood in terms of RB as a failure of memory rather than as a failure of perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On obtaining episodic priming in a lexical decision task following paired-associate learning.

In four experiments, subjects made lexical (word-nonword) decisions to target letter strings after studying paired associates. In this lexical decision test, word targets previously studied as response terms in the paired associates were preceded at a 150-ms and/or 950-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) by one of various subsets of the following six types of primes: (a) a neutral ({xxx} or {ready}) prime, (b) a semantically unrelated word prime episodically related to the target through its having been previously studied in the same pair, (c) a semantically related word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, (d) a semantically unrelated word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, (e) a nonstudied semantically related word prime, and (f) a nonstudied semantically unrelated word prime. At the 950-ms SOA, facilitation of lexical decisions produced by the episodically related primes was greater in test lists in which there were (a) no 150-ms SOA trials intermixed, (b) no previously studied semantically related primes, and (c) no studied nonword targets. At the 150-ms SOA, facilitation from episodic priming was greater in test lists in which there were (a) no semantically related primes and (b) all studied word targets and no studied nonword targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning to read and spell in Persian: A cross-sectional study from Grades 1 to 4.

We investigated the reading and spelling development of 140 Persian children attending Grades 1–4 in Iran. Persian has very consistent letter–sound correspondences, but it varies in transparency because 3 of its 6 vowel phonemes are not marked with letters. Persian also varies in spelling consistency because 6 phonemes have more than one orthographic representation. We tested whether lexicality effects—an advantage of words over nonwords—would be affected be reading transparency and spelling consistency. We found that children became more efficient readers and spellers across grades, with the greatest growth occurring between Grades 1 and 2. For reading, lexicality effects were present with transparent words starting in Grade 2, but lexicality effects with opaque words were not yet present in Grade 4. As expected, the size of transparency effects for reading decreased across grades. For spelling, however, there was no lexicality effect for either consistent or inconsistent words. Moreover, consistency effects were large and did not decrease systematically across grades. Most interesting from a developmental perspective was the finding that both reading transparency and spelling polygraphy affected reading as well as spelling in Grades 1 and 2, but the word characteristics had differential effects as a function of literacy task in Grades 3 and 4. This pattern highlights the vulnerability of children's representations and processes during the early phases of acquisition as well as the rapidity with which representations and processes become specialized as a function of the literacy task at hand. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How is word meaning accessed in reading? Evidence from the phonologically mediated interference effect.

In reading, do people access word meaning by looking up the mental lexicon orthographically or by first converting spelling to sound and then accessing the lexicon phonologically? In Experiment 1, participants read a pair of words (e.g., experimental pair: lion-bare, control pair: lion-bean) and decided which member of the word pair was related in meaning to a third word (e.g., wolf). Error rates and reaction times were worse on the experimental pairs with homophones as distractors than on the control pairs, indicating that inappropriate lexical entries were accessed by homophones via the phonological route. In Experiments 2 and 3, when a delay was imposed between the word pair and the third word, the phonologically mediated interference effect disappeared at a stimulus onset asynchrony of 300-400 ms, indicating that the wrongly activated lexical entries were later inhibited, apparently via the orthographic route. A revised dual-route model that emphasizes phonological recoding is proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological priming in auditory word recognition.

Used a priming technique to test specific predictions regarding cohort activation in 3 experiments involving 170 undergraduates. Ss identified target words embedded in noise at different signal-to-noise ratios. The target words were either presented in isolation or preceded by a prime item that shared phonological information with the target. In Exp I, primes and targets were English words that shared 0, 1, 2, 3, or all phonemes from the beginning of the word. In Exp II, nonword primes preceded word targets and shared initial phonemes. In Exp III, word primes and word targets shared phonemes from the end of a word. Reliable phonological priming was observed in all experiments. Results of Exps I and II support the assumption of activation of lexical candidates based on word-initial information, as proposed in cohort theory; however, results of Exp III, which showed increased probability of correctly identifying targets that shared phonemes from the end of words, did not support the predictions derived from the theory. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)