Phonological typicality does not influence fixation durations in normal reading.

Using a word-by-word self-paced reading paradigm, T. A. Farmer, M. H. Christiansen, and P. Monaghan (2006) reported faster reading times for words that are phonologically typical for their syntactic category (i.e., noun or verb) than for words that are phonologically atypical. This result has been taken to suggest that language users are sensitive to subtle relationships between sound and syntactic function and that they make rapid use of this information in comprehension. The present article reports attempts to replicate this result using both eyetracking during normal reading (Experiment 1) and word-by-word self-paced reading (Experiment 2). No hint of a phonological typicality effect emerged on any reading-time measure in Experiment 1, nor did Experiment 2 replicate Farmer et al.’s finding from self-paced reading. Indeed, the differences between condition means were not consistently in the predicted direction, as phonologically atypical verbs were read more quickly than phonologically typical verbs, on most measures. Implications for research on visual word recognition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vowel Duration Affects Visual Word Identification: Evidence That the Mediating Phonology Is Phonetically Informed.

What form is the lexical phonology that gives rise to phonological effects in visual lexical decision? The authors explored the hypothesis that beyond phonological contrasts the physical phonetic details of words are included. Three experiments using lexical decision and 1 using naming compared processing times for printed words (e.g., plead and pleat) that differ, when spoken, in vowel length and overall duration. Latencies were longer for long-vowel words than for short-vowel words in lexical decision but not in naming. Further, lexical decision on long-vowel words benefited more from identity priming than lexical decision on short-vowel words, suggesting that representations of long-vowel words achieve activation thresholds more slowly. The discussion focused on phonetically informed phonologies, particularly gestural phonology and its potential for understanding reading acquisition and performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological Neighbors Speed Visual Word Processing: Evidence From Multiple Tasks.

The author investigated the role of phonological neighborhood on visual word recognition. Using a lexical decision task, the author showed in Experiment 1 that words with large phonological neighborhoods were processed more rapidly than those with smaller phonological neighborhoods. This facilitative effect was obtained even when the nonword fillers had the same number of phonological neighbors as the words. This finding indicates that phonological neighbors speed processing within the phonological system. In the next 2 experiments, this claim was further tested using the naming and semantic categorization tasks. In both experiments, the effect of phonological neighborhood was found to be facilitative. The results across all 3 experiments indicate that phonology is central to visual word recognition and that phonological neighborhood provides a reliable measure of phonological processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Still no phonological typicality effect on word reading time (and no good explanation of one, either): A rejoinder to Farmer, Monaghan, Misyak, and Christiansen.

In this brief rejoinder, we respond to Farmer, Monaghan, Misyak, and Christiansen (2011). We argue that the data still do not support the claim that reading time is affected by the phonological typicality of a word for its part of speech. We also question Farmer et al.'s claim that interleaving syntactic structures in an experiment modifies grammatically based syntactic expectations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dependence of lexical relatedness effects on syntactic connectedness.

Context effects on lexical decision were analyzed by manipulating lexical relatedness and syntactic connectedness. Related and unrelated word pairs were embedded in syntactic (e.g., "the author of this book/floor") and in scrambled (e.g., "the author the and book/floor") phrases. The sequences were presented serially and subjects made lexical decisions to the terminal targets. In four experiments, relatedness effects were substantial in syntactic phrases but only marginal in scrambled sequences. This result was unaffected by presentation rate or by blocking manipulations. A fifth experiment showed that the relatedness effect in syntactic phrases involved both facilitation of responses to related words and inhibition of responses to unrelated words. These results argue against a role for intralexical priming in on-line reading. They highlight the role of syntactic connectedness and suggest that contextual facilitation depends on the ease of integration of new words with the current text-level representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic and phonological information flow in the production lexicon.

When speakers produce words, lexical access proceeds through semantic and phonological levels of processing. If phonological processing begins based on partial semantic information, processing is cascaded; otherwise, it is discrete. In standard models of lexical access, semantically processed words exert phonological effects only if processing is cascaded. In 3 experiments, speakers named pictures of objects with homophone names (ball), while auditory distractor words were heard beginning 150 ms prior to picture onset. Distractors speeded picture naming (compared with controls) only when related to the nondepicted meaning of the picture (e.g., dance), exhibiting an early phonological effect, thereby supporting the cascaded prediction. Distractors slowed picture naming when categorically (e.g., frisbee) related to the depicted picture meaning, but not when associatively (e.g., game) related to it. An interactive activation model is presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological phrase boundaries constrain the online syntactic analysis of spoken sentences.

Two experiments tested whether phonological phrase boundaries constrain online syntactic analysis in French. Pairs of homophones belonging to different syntactic categories (verb and adjective) were used to create sentences with a local syntactic ambiguity (e.g., [le petit chien mort], in English, the dead little dog, vs. [le petit chien] [mord], in English, the little dog bites, where brackets indicate phonological phrase boundaries). An expert speaker recorded the sentences with either a maximally informative prosody or a minimally informative one. Participants correctly assigned the appropriate syntactic category to the target word, even without any access to the lexical disambiguating information, in both a completion task (Experiment 1) and an abstract word detection task (Experiment 2). The size of the experimental effect was modulated by the prosodic manipulation (maximally vs. minimally informative), guaranteeing that prosody played a crucial role in disambiguation. The authors discuss the implications of these results for models of online speech perception and language acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clues to the cognitive organization of reading and writing from developmental hyperlexia.

Controversies regarding the organization of the cognitive systems used for processing written language were investigated in a case study of a mentally retarded hyperlexic child. Despite severe impairments in semantic processing, this child demonstrated intact phonological and orthographic processing. Detailed assessments of his nonword reading abilities provided support for the hypothesis that phonological processing of written words was accomplished by using lexical representations instead of applying nonlexical grapheme-phoneme transcoding rules. Longitudinal investigation of the hyperlexic child's development of writing supports the notion that reading and spelling rely on common mental representations rather than separate input and output mental lexicons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word selection in reading sentences: preceding versus following contexts

A new task, double-word selection, simulated lexical ambiguity by presenting 2 words between which the reader had to choose while reading a sentence shown at 133 or 150 ms/word, following a procedure called rapid serial visual presentation. The double-word pair was presented for less than 100 ms. In immediate recall of the sentence, readers made a correct selection on most trials, both when the relevant context came before the double words and (less accurately) when the relevant context came shortly afterward (Experiments 1 and 2) or with a delay of up to 1 s (Experiment 3). Both words could often be reported if the sentence was stopped one word after the double words (Experiment 2). In Experiment 4, a single function word determined selection between double words differing in syntactic category. The results are consistent with a 2-stage modular interactive model of word perception (M. C. Potter, A. Moryadas, I. Abrams, & A. Noel, 1993) and extend this model to word selection and lexical disambiguation.     

The relative time course of semantic and phonological activation in reading Chinese.

The relative time course of semantic and phonological activation was investigated in the context of whether phonology mediates access to lexical representations in reading Chinese. Compound words (Experiment 1) and single-character words (Experiments 2 and 3) were preceded by semantic and phonological primes. Strong semantic priming effects were found at both short (57 ms) and long (200 ms) stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), but phonological effects were either absent in lexical decision (Experiment 1), were present only at the longer SOA in character decision (Experiment 2) or were equally strong as semantic effects in naming (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 revealed facilitatory or inhibitory effects, depending on SOA, in phonological judgments to character pairs that were not phonologically but semantically related. It was concluded that, in reading Chinese, semantic information in the lexicon is activated at least as early and just as strongly as phonological information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The activation of phonological representations by bilinguals while reading silently: Evidence from interlingual homophones.

These experiments investigated whether bilinguals activate phonological representations from both of their languages when reading silently in one. The critical stimuli were interlingual homophones (e.g., sank in English and cinq in French). French-English and English-French bilinguals completed an English lexical decision task. Decisions made by French-English bilinguals were significantly faster and more accurate for interlingual homophones than for matched English control words. In subsequent experiments, the homophone facilitation effect in the latency data disappeared when distractors were changed to pseudohomophones, when cognates and interlingual homographs were added to the experiment, and when the proportion of critical stimuli was decreased. However, the homophone effect in the error data remained. In contrast, English-French bilinguals revealed little evidence of an interlingual homophone effect. Several attempts were made to increase the saliency of the nontarget language, however these manipulations produced only a small effect in the error data. These results indicate that the activation of phonological representations can appear to be both language-specific and nonspecific depending on the proficiency of the bilinguals and whether they are reading in their weaker or stronger language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: Evidence for nonselective lexical access.

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. In the present study, the authors investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a 2nd language (L2) lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and nonidentical cognate words (e.g., banaan-banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment that used eyetracking, the authors showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals. (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.     

Tip-of-the-tongue states and lexical access in dementia

We induced tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states in elderly participants with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). We found that they experienced TOTs but, unlike control subjects, were unable to provide any information about the target word for which they were searching. The related words produced by the AD participants were almost all semantically related to the target, with very few phonological relatives. (Adults normally produce more phonological relatives than semantic.) We examine the relationship between the target and non-target words produced in terms of their syntactic category, frequency, and imageability. The results are discussed with regard to their implications for speech production models. We interpret the results in terms of a two-stage interactive account where the retrieval deficit in dementia lies between the semantic and lexical levels.     

Using sound to solve syntactic problems: The role of phonology in grammatical category assignments.

One ubiquitous problem in language processing involves the assignment of words to the correct grammatical category, such as noun or verb. In general, semantic and syntactic cues have been cited as the principal information for grammatical category assignment, to the neglect of possible phonological cues. This neglect is unwarranted, and the following claims are made: (1) Numerous correlations between phonology and grammatical class exist, (2) some of these correlations are large and can pervade the entire lexicon of a language and hence can involve thousands of words, (3) experiments have repeatedly found that adults and children have learned these correlations, and (4) explanations for how these correlations arose can be proposed and evaluated. Implications of these phenonema for language representation and processing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multiple lexical codes in reading: Evidence from eye movements, naming time, and oral reading.

The role of semantic, orthographic, and phonological codes in word recognition and text integration in reading was investigated in 4 experiments. Participants read sentences containing words that had multiple semantic codes (e.g., calf), multiple semantic and orthographic codes (e.g., brake-break), or multiple semantic and phonological codes (e.g., tear). Converging evidence from fixation time, naming time, and oral reading indicated that phonological, semantic, and orthographic information about words are sources of early constraint in word processing. Evidence was also found that indicated that phonological codes play an important role in text integration in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The selection of determiners in noun phrase production.

Picture-word interference experiments conducted with Italian speakers investigated how determiners are selected in noun phrase (NP) production. Determiner production involves the selection of a noun's syntactic features (mass or count, gender), which specify the type of determiner to be selected, and the subsequent selection of a particular phonological form (e.g., the/a in English). The research focused on the syntactic feature of gender. Results repeatedly failed to replicate the gender-congruity effect in NP production reported with Dutch speakers (longer latencies for target-distractor noun pairs with contrasting as opposed to the same gender). It is proposed that the discrepant results reflect processing differences in lexical access in Italian and Dutch: The selection of determiners in Italian, but not in Dutch, depends on phonological properties of the word that follows it in the NP. Evidence consistent with this explanation was obtained in an experiment in which determiner selection in NP production was hindered by conflicting phonological information in the NP. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantics does not need a processing license from syntax in reading Chinese.

Two event-related brain potential experiments were conducted to investigate whether there is a functional primacy of syntactic structure building over semantic processes during Chinese sentence reading. In both experiments, we found that semantic interpretation proceeded despite the impossibility of a well-formed syntactic analysis. In Experiment 1, we found an N400 difference between combined syntactic category and semantic violations and single syntactic violations. This finding is inconsistent with earlier German and French studies (e.g., Friederici, Gunter, Hahne, & Mauth, 2004; Friederici, Steinhauer, & Frisch, 1999; Hahne & Friederici, 2002) showing that semantic integration does not proceed for words of the wrong syntactic category. In Experiment 2, we used a design that was very similar to that used in earlier German and French studies, but semantic violations still evoked an N400, irrespective of a simultaneous syntactic category violation. We argue against processing models that do not allow for semantic integration of a word unless it can be grammatically attached to the developing phrase structure tree. Rather, language experience may modulate the mode of interplay between syntax and semantics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)