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)     

Masked priming from orthographic neighbors: An ERP investigation.

Two experiments combined masked priming with event-related potential (ERP) recordings to examine effects of primes that are orthographic neighbors of target words. Experiment 1 compared effects of repetition primes with effects of primes that were high-frequency orthographic neighbors of low-frequency targets (e.g., faute-faune [error-wildlife]), and Experiment 2 compared the same word neighbor primes with nonword neighbor primes (e.g., aujel-autel [altar]). Word neighbor primes showed the standard inhibitory priming effect in lexical decision latencies that sharply contrasted with the facilitatory effects of nonword neighbor primes. This contrast was most evident in the ERP signal starting at around 300 ms posttarget onset and continuing through the bulk of the N400 component. In this time window, repetition primes and nonword neighbor primes generated more positive-going waveforms than unrelated primes, whereas word neighbor primes produced null effects. The results are discussed with respect to possible mechanisms of lexical competition during visual word recognition. (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)     

The effects of neighborhood frequency in reading and lexical decision

To test the effect of the frequency of orthographic "neighbors" on the identification of a printed word, two sets of words were constructed (equated on the number of neighbors, word frequency, and number of letters); in one set, the words had no higher frequency neighbors and in the other set, they had at least one higher frequency neighbor. Identification was slower for the latter set. In Experiment 1, this was indexed by longer response times in a lexical decision task. In Experiment 2, the target words were embedded in sentences, and slower identification was indexed by disruptions in reading: more regressions back to the words with higher frequency neighbors and longer fixations on the text immediately following these words. The latter results indicate that a higher frequency neighbor affects relatively late stages of lexical access, an interpretation consistent with both activation-verification and interactive activation models.     

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)     

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)     

Making things difficult in lexical decision: The impact of pseudohomophones and transposed-letter nonwords on frequency and semantic priming effects.

Performance in a lexical decision task is crucially dependent on the difficulty of the word–nonword discrimination. More wordlike nonwords cause not only a latency increase for words but also, as reported by Stone and Van Orden (1993), larger word frequency effects. Several current models of lexical decision making can explain these types of results in terms of a single mechanism, a mechanism driven by the nature of the interactions within the lexicon. In 2 experiments, we replicated Stone and Van Orden's increased frequency effect using both pseudohomophones (e.g., BEEST) and transposed-letter nonwords (e.g., JUGDE) as the more wordlike nonwords. In a 3rd experiment, we demonstrated that simply increasing word latencies without changing the difficulty of the word–nonword discrimination does not produce larger frequency effects. These results are reasonably consistent with many current models. In contrast, neither pseudohomophones nor transposed-letter nonwords altered the size of semantic priming effects across 4 additional experiments, posing a challenge to models that would attempt to explain both nonword difficulty effects and semantic priming effects in lexical decision tasks in terms of a single, lexically driven mechanism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic, phonological, and mediated priming in reading and lexical decisions.

Four experiments were conducted to investigate whether semantic activation of a concept spreads to phonologically and graphemically related concepts. In lexical decision or self-paced reading tasks, subjects responded to pairs of words that were semantically related (e.g., light–lamp), that rhymed (e.g., lamp–lamp), or that combined both of these relations through a mediating word (e.g., light–lamp). In one version of each task, test lists contained word–word pairs (e.g., light–lamp) as well as nonword–word (e.g., pown–table) and word–nonword pairs (e.g., month–poad); in another version, test lists contained only word–word pairs. The lexical decision and self-paced reading tasks were facilitated by semantic and rhyming relations regardless of the presence or absence of nonwords on the test lists. The effect of the mediated relation, however, depended on the presence of nonwords among the stimuli. When only words were included, there was no effect of the mediated relation, but when nonwords were included, lexical decision and self-paced reading responses were inhibited by the mediated relation. These inhibitory effects are attributed to processes occurring after lexical access, and the relative advantages of the self-paced reading task are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of "neighborhood size" in reading and lexical decision.

Assessed the effects of neighborhood size ("N")—the number of words differing from a target word by exactly 1 letter (i.e., "neighbors")—on word identification. In Exps 1 and 2, the frequency of the highest frequency neighbor was equated, and N had opposite effects in lexical decision and reading. In Exp 1, a larger N facilitated lexical decision judgments, whereas in Experiment 2, a larger N had an inhibitory effect on reading sentences that contained the words of Exp 1. Moreover, a significant inhibitory effect in Exp 2 that was due to a larger N appeared on gaze duration on the target word, and there was no hint of facilitation on the measures of reading that tap the earliest processing of a word. In Exp 3, the number of higher frequency neighbors was equated for the high-N and low-N words, and a larger N caused target words to be skipped significantly more and produced inhibitory effects later in reading, some of which were plausibly due to misidentification of the target word when skipped. Regression analyses indicated that, in reading, increasing the number of higher frequency neighbors had a clear inhibitory effect on word identification and that increasing the number of lower frequency neighbors may have a weak facilitative effect on word identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of syllable frequency and syllable neighborhood frequency in visual word recognition.

Three experiments were carried out to analyze the role of syllable frequency in lexical decision and naming. The results show inhibitory effects of syllable frequency in the lexical decision task for both high- and low-frequency words. In contrast, the effect of syllable frequency is facilitatory in the naming task. A post hoc analysis revealed the important role played by the number of higher frequency syllabic neighbors (words that share a syllable with the target) in the lexical decision task and the role of the frequency of the first syllable in the naming task. Experiment 3 manipulated the neighborhood syllable frequency directly by comparing words with few higher frequency syllabic neighbors and words with many higher frequency syllabic neighbors in the lexical decision task; an inhibitory neighborhood syllable frequency effect was found. The results are interpreted in terms of current models of visual word recognition and word naming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time it takes bilinguals and monolinguals to draw pictures and write words.

In 4 experiments, picture-word translation was studied in Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals. In Experiment 1, bilinguals drew pictures or wrote English or Spanish words for picture or English or Spanish word stimuli. Equivalent increases in production onset latency for cross-language/modality translation were found. In Experiment 2, bilinguals and monolinguals drew pictures or wrote English words for picture or English word stimuli. Cross-modality translation equivalence was replicated, though bilinguals were slower than monolinguals overall. In Experiment 3, bilinguals and monolinguals were equivalent when they drew or wrote names from pictures as blocked tasks. In Experiment 4, bilinguals replicated Experiment 1 but were faster for blocked than mixed tasks, indicating that stimulus-processing uncertainty slows them. Results support a revised concept mediation model, with equivalent semantic access for pictures and words for bilinguals and monolinguals (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is there a neighborhood frequency effect in English? Evidence from reading and lexical decision.

What is the effect of a word's higher frequency neighbors on its identification time? According to activation-based models of word identification (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996; J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart, 1981), words with higher frequency neighbors will be processed more slowly than words without higher frequency neighbors because of the lexical competition mechanism embodied in these models. Although a critical prediction of these models, this inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect has been elusive in studies that have used English stimuli. In the present experiments, the effect of higher frequency neighbors was examined in the lexical decision task and when participants were reading sentences while their eye movements were monitored. Results suggest that higher frequency neighbors have little, if any, effect on the identification of English words. The implications for activation-based models of word identification are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition and lexical decision without detection: Unconscious perception?

Stimulus detection and concurrent measures of stimulus recognition were compared to establish whether perception occurs in the absence of detection. The target stimuli were familiar words (Experiments 1 and 2), nonwords (Experiment 3), or both words and nonwords (Experiment 4). On each trial, either a stimulus or a blank field was presented. Ss first decided whether a stimulus had been presented and then made either a forced-choice recognition decision (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or a lexical decision (Experiment 4). Both words and nonwords were recognized and discriminated following correct decisions (i.e., hits). However, in the absence of stimulus detection (i.e., misses), only words were recognized or discriminated. These qualitatively different patterns of results following hits and misses for words and nonwords suggest that stimulus detection may provide an adequate measure of conscious awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The quiet clam is quite calm: Transposed-letter neighborhood effects on eye movements during reading.

In responses time tasks, inhibitory neighborhood effects have been found for word pairs that differ in a transposition of two adjacent letters (e.g., clam/calm). Here, the author describes two eye-tracking experiments conducted to explore transposed-letter (TL) neighborhood effects within the context of normal silent reading. In Experiment 1, sentences contained a target word that either has a TL neighbor (e.g., angel, which has the TL neighbor angle) or does not (e.g., alien). In Experiment 2, the context was manipulated to examine whether semantic constraints attenuate neighborhood effects. Readers took longer to process words that have a TL neighbor than control words but only when either member of the TL pair was likely. Furthermore, this interference effect occurred very late in processing and was not affected by relative word frequency. These interference effects can be explained either by the spreading of activation from the target word to its TL neighbor or by the misidentification of target words for their TL neighbors. Implications for models of orthographic input coding and models of eye-movement control are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Short-term implicit memory for words and nonwords.

A short-term implicit memory effect is reported and interpreted as arising within the word recognition system. In Experiment 1, repetition priming in lexical decision was determined for low-frequency words and pseudowords at lags of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and 23 intervening items. For words, a large short-term priming component decayed rapidly but smoothly over the first 3 items (8 s) to a stable long-term value. For nonwords, priming dropped to the long-term value with a single intervening item. This Lag x Lexicality interaction was replicated with a naming task in Experiment 2 and with high-frequency words in Experiment 3. Word frequency affected long-term priming but not the size or decay rate of short-term priming, dissociating the two repetition effects. In Experiment 4, an old-new decision task was used to test explicit memory. Parallel word and nonword decay patterns were found, dissociating short-term priming from explicit working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociative affective and associative priming effects in the lexical decision task: Yes versus no responses to word targets reveal evaluative judgment tendencies.

The affective priming effect (AP; i.e., shorter evaluative or lexical decision latencies for affectively congruent prime–target pairs) has often been interpreted as evidence for spreading activation from the prime to affectively congruent targets. The present study emphasizes the view that in the lexical decision task, the prime-target configuration is implicitly evaluated as a question of the form "Is (prime) (target)?" (e.g., "Is death wise?") so that there is a tendency to affirm in cases of congruency and to negate in cases of incongruency. Therefore, after establishing the AP with the lexical decision task in Experiment 1, in Experiment 2 the assignment of yes responses to words and nonwords was varied. For the word?=?yes condition, the AP emerged, whereas the data pattern was reversed for the word?=?no condition. In Experiment 3, a comparable pattern of results was not found for symmetrical or backward associatively related prime–target pairs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why do non-color words interfere with color naming?

In the non-color-word Stroop task, university students' response latencies were longer for low-frequency than for higher frequency target words. Visual identity primes facilitated color naming in groups reading the prime silently or processing it semantically (Experiment 1) but did not when participants generated a rhyme of the prime (Experiment 3). With auditory identity primes, generating an associate or a rhyme of the prime produced interference (Experiments 2 and 3). Color-naming latencies were longer for nonwords than for words (Experiment 4). There was a small long-term repetition benefit in color naming for low-frequency words that had been presented in the lexical decision task (Experiment 5). Facilitation of word recognition speeds color naming except when phonological activation of the base word increases response competition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rule and analogy mechanisms in reading nonwords: Hough dou peapel rede gnew wirds?

In Experiment 1, participants read a long list of nonwords and made ratings of pronunciation variability. Experiment 2 compared speeded naming of nonwords presented alone or mixed with words. In both experiments, at least 85% of nonwords based on inconsistent word bodies were pronounced according to spelling–sound rules, but regular pronunciations were assigned to only 30–40% of nonwords with no regular word-body neighbors. Contradicting the prediction of parallel-distributed-processing models of nonword naming, the probability of an irregular pronunciation was a function of the proportion of irregular word neighbors, not the frequency of these neighbors. The dual-route cascade model overestimated the proportion of regular nonword pronunciations but successfully predicted the particular nonwords most likely to be pronounced irregularly. These results highlight the issues that must be addressed in future refinements of models of nonword naming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The case of the vanishing frequency effect: A retest of the verification model.

The assumptions of the activation-verification model regarding the role of word frequency in lexical access were investigated in 2 experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that robust frequency effects occur in a standard lexical decision task in which the target remains in view until the subject responds. In Experiment 2 the same materials were followed by a backward pattern mask. Subjects first identified 1 of the 4 letters using a forced-choice task (G. M. Reicher, 1969) and were then probed to make a lexical decision. No frequency effects were observed in the lexical decision task and the significant main effect of frequency found in the subject's analysis of the Reicher task was small and nonmonotonic. A regression analysis on the word data obtained in Experiment 1 indicated that the number of higher frequency neighbors produced a potent interference effect, that the total number of neighbors produced a smaller but significant facilitation effect, and that neither word frequency nor summed bigram frequency accounted for any significant variation once the effects of higher frequency neighbors were partialed out. Regression analyses of other published data showed a similar pattern of results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term priming of neighbours biases the word recognition process: Evidence from a lexical decision task.

The role of orthographically similar words (i.e., neighbours) in the word recognition process has been studied extensively using short-term priming paradigms (e.g., Colombo, 1986). Here we demonstrate that long-term effects of neighbour priming can also be obtained. Experiment 1 showed that prior study of a neighbour (e.g., TANGO) increased later lexical decision performance for similar words (e.g., MANGO), but decreased performance for similar pseudowords (e.g., LANGO). Experiment 2 replicated this bias effect and showed that the increase in lexical decision performance due to neighbour priming is selectively due to words from a relatively sparse neighbourhood. Explanations of the bias effect in terms of lexical activation and episodic memory retrieval are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)