Does priming specific syllables during tip-of-the-tongue states facilitate word retrieval in older adults?

This experiment investigated whether phonological priming of syllables helps resolve tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states in young and older adults. Young, young-old, and old-old adults read general knowledge questions and responded "know," "TOT," or "don't know" accordingly. Participants then read a list of 10 words that included 3 phonological primes corresponding solely to the first, middle, or last syllable of the target word. Young and young-old adults resolved more TOTs after first-syllable primes, but old-old adults showed no increase in TOT resolution following any primes. These results indicate that presentation of the first syllable of a missing word strengthens the weakened phonological connections that cause TOTs and increases word retrieval, but not for old-old adults who experience greater deficits in the transmission of priming across these connections. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why a superman cannot help a tsunami: Activation of grammatical class influences resolution of young and older adults' tip-of-the-tongue states.

Young (aged 18-23), young-old (aged 61-73), and old-old (aged 75-89) adults saw general knowledge questions whose answers were designated target words. Participants responded that they knew, did not know, or were having a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state for the answer. After TOT states, participants saw a 5-word list in which 1 was a "prime" containing the target's first syllable and that shared or differed in part of speech from the target. The question was then presented again, and target retrieval was attempted. Results revealed age differences in resolution of TOT states as a function of the prime's grammatical class. Following different part-of-speech primes, young and young-old adults showed increased resolution of TOT states relative to phonologically unrelated words, whereas old-old adults did not. In contrast, old-old adults demonstrated decreased resolution of TOT states following same part-of-speech primes, whereas young and young-old adults' TOT resolution was unaffected. These findings are consistent with interactive activation theories of speech production in which phonology can influence lexical selection and also suggest an increased susceptibility to phonological competitors in the later stages of the aging process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological priming effects on word retrieval and tip-of-the-tongue experiences in young and older adults.

In a repetition priming paradigm, young and older participants read aloud prime words that sometimes shared phonological components with a target word that answered a general knowledge question. In Experiment 1, prior processing of phonologically related words decreased tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) and increased correct responses to subsequent questions. In Experiment 2, the priming task occurred only when the participant could not answer the question. Processing phonologically related words increased correct recall, but only when the participant was in a TOT state. Phonological priming effects were age invariant, although older adults produced relatively more TOTs. Results support the transmission deficit model that the weak connections among phonological representations that cause TOTs are strengthened by production of phonologically related words. There was no evidence that phonologically related words block TOT targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related changes in the tip-of-the-tongue experience

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experience was compared in younger and older adults, using picture and definition cues to elicit TOTs. Older adults (a) experienced more TOTs, (b) had less target word information available during the TOT, and (c) had more related words (blockers) come to mind during the TOT. There were no age differences in either the speed or likelihood of immediate resolution of the TOT. Picture and definition cues were equally likely to evoke TOTs, although picture cues elicited more interlopers. The idea that TOTs are more likely to be elicited by less common target words was not supported.     

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.     

For a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production: Testing the syllable-bigram controversy.

This study examined the theoretical controversy on the impact of syllables and bigrams in handwriting production. French children and adults wrote words on a digitizer so that we could collect data on the local, online processing of handwriting production. The words differed in the position of the lowest frequency bigram. In one condition, it coincided with the word's syllable boundary. In the other condition, it was located before the syllable boundary. The results yielded higher movement durations at the position where the low-frequency bigram coincided with the syllable boundary compared to where the low-frequency bigram appeared before the syllable boundary. Syllable-oriented strategies failed with the presence of a very low-frequency bigram within the initial syllable. Further analysis showed that children in grades 3 and 4 privileged syllable-oriented programming strategies. The production times of children in grade 4 were also affected by syllable frequency and, to a lesser extent, bigram frequency. The adults writing durations were modulated by bigram frequency. Therefore, both bigrams and syllables regulate handwriting production although the influence of bigrams was stronger in adults than children. In the light of these results, we propose a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Similarity neighborhoods of spoken two-syllable words: Retroactive effects on multiple activation.

Investigated the influence of individual syllables in 2-syllable words on the recognition of each other. Specifically, perceptual identification of 2-syllable words comprised of 2 monosyllabic words (spondees) was examined. Individual syllables in a spondee were characterized as either easy or hard, depending on the syllable's neighborhood characteristics; an easy syllable was a high-frequency word in a sparse neighborhood of low-frequency words, and a hard syllable was a low-frequency word in a high-density, high-frequency neighborhood. In Exp 1, stimuli were created by splicing together recordings of component syllables of the spondee, thus equating for syllable stress. Additional experiments tested the perceptual identification of naturally produced spondees, spliced nonwords, and monosyllables alone. Neighborhood structure strongly affected identification in all experiments. Identification performance for spondees with a hard–easy syllable pattern was higher than for spondees with an easy–hard syllable pattern, indicating a primarily retroactive pattern of influence in spoken word recognition. Results strongly suggest that word recognition involves multiple activation and delayed commitment, thus ensuring accurate and efficient recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syllable and letter knowledge in early Korean Hangul reading.

This study examined the development of Korean consonant–vowel (CV) syllable identification, consonant and vowel letter knowledge, and their relationships to phonological awareness and the reading of regular Hangul words among Korean kindergartners as a 6-month longitudinal study. Results showed that Korean children identified CV syllables better than consonant and vowel letters. In regression analyses, CV syllable identification at Time 1 strongly contributed to Hangul word recognition concurrently over and above letter knowledge, as well as longitudinally after controlling for letter knowledge and reading at Time 1. However, letter knowledge did not predict Hangul reading once CV syllable identification was controlled. In addition, CV syllable knowledge facilitated subsequent letter knowledge and phoneme onset and coda awareness. The results, in general, shed light on the salient roles of syllables in the early literacy development of Korean. (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)     

Sources of information in word perception.

Disyllabic words were presented tachistoscopically to a total of 16 undergraduates in 2 experiments, and report of the words was required. In Exp I, word frequency was varied but the frequencies of the constituent syllables were held constant. In Exp II, syllable frequency varied while word frequency remained constant. The prime determinant of perceptual accuracy was word frequency, but an analysis of partial errors showed that some discriminability effects at both the word and the syllable level were present. There was a slight advantage for the 1st syllable over the 2nd within a word. There was no overall improvement with practice, but errors on high frequency words became fewer and on low frequency words correspondingly more frequent. Results suggest that word perception involves extraction and resynthesis of information about components of several different sizes within a word. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Naturally occurring and experimentally induced tip-of-the-tongue experiences in three adult age groups.

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences were examined in 30 young (ages 18–24 years), 30 young-old (ages 60–74), and 30 old-old (ages 80–92) adults. In Study 1, TOT experiences were experimentally induced with definitions of to-be-retrieved targets. If the target was not retrieved, orthographic or semantic cues were provided. Age-related increases in the occurrence of TOT experiences and in the time needed to resolve TOT experiences were found for young versus young-old and young-old versus old-old groups; all comparisons were significant except for young versus young-old TOT occurrence, which approached significance. In Study 2, the same participants recorded naturally occurring TOT experiences in structured diaries during a 4-week interval. Both the number of TOT experiences and the resolution time for TOT experiences increased with age. However, the percentage of TOT experiences resolved was equal across age groups; given enough time, even the oldest participants resolved virtually all TOT experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What Is a TOT? Cognate and Translation Effects on Tip-of-the-Tongue States in Spanish-English and Tagalog-English Bilinguals.

The authors induced tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) for English words in monolinguals and bilinguals using picture stimuli with cognate (e.g., vampire, which is vampiro in Spanish) and noncognate (e.g., funnel, which is embudo in Spanish) names. Bilinguals had more TOTs than did monolinguals unless the target pictures had translatable cognate names, and bilinguals had fewer TOTs for noncognates they were later able to translate. TOT rates for the same targets in monolinguals indicated that these effects could not be attributed to target difficulty. Two popular TOT accounts must be modified to explain cognate and translatability facilitation effects, and cross-language interference cannot explain bilinguals' increased TOTs rates. Instead the authors propose that, relative to monolinguals, bilinguals are less able to activate representations specific to each language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Planning and articulation in incremental word production: Syllable-frequency effects in English.

We investigated the role of syllables during speech planning in English by measuring syllable-frequency effects. So far, syllable-frequency effects in English have not been reported. English has poorly defined syllable boundaries, and thus the syllable might not function as a prominent unit in English speech production. Speakers produced either monosyllabic (Experiment 1) or disyllabic (Experiment 2–4) pseudowords as quickly as possible in response to symbolic cues. Monosyllabic targets consisted of either high- or low-frequency syllables, whereas disyllabic items contained either a 1st or 2nd syllable that was frequency-manipulated. Significant syllable-frequency effects were found in all experiments. Whereas previous findings for disyllables in Dutch and Spanish—languages with relatively clear syllable boundaries—showed effects of a frequency manipulation on 1st but not 2nd syllables, in our study English speakers were sensitive to the frequency of both syllables. We interpret this sensitivity as an indication that the production of English has more extensive planning scopes at the interface of phonetic encoding and articulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word-frequency and phonological-neighborhood effects on verbal short-term memory.

Immediate memory span and maximal articulation rate were assessed for word sets differing in frequency, word-neighborhood size, and average word-neighborhood frequency. Memory span was greater for high- than low-frequency words, greater for words from large than small phonological neighborhoods, and greater for words from high- than low-frequency phonological neighborhoods. Maximal articulation rate was also facilitated by word frequency, phonological-neighborhood size, and neighborhood frequency. In a final study all 3 lexical variables were found to influence the recall outcome for individual words. These effects of phonological-word neighborhood on memory performance suggest that phonological information in long-term memory plays an active role in recall in short-term-memory tasks, and they present a challenge to current theories of short-term memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of word linguistic properties on phonological awareness in Spanish children.

We investigated whether some word linguistic properties studied by R. Treiman and S. Weatherston (see record 1992-37025-001) in the English language have the same influence on phonological awareness of preschoolers and kindergartners in the Spanish language. We examined the effects of these word linguistic properties on children's ability to isolate the initial consonant: phoneme articulatory properties, the position of stressed syllables in the words, the presence of initial consonant clusters, and the word length. We found that effects due to word length and the syllable-initial consonant cluster were similar in English and Spanish. In contrast to English-speaking children, the Spanish-speaking children could pronounce the first consonant regardless of the position of the stressed syllable, and continuant consonants were easier to isolate than stop consonants. Implications for the training of phonological awareness in the Spanish language are discussed. (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)     

Syllables as processing units in handwriting production.

This research focused on the syllable as a processing unit in handwriting. Participants wrote, in uppercase letters, words that had been visually presented. The interletter intervals provide information on the timing of motor production. In Experiment 1, French participants wrote words that shared the initial letters but had different syllable boundaries. In Experiment 2, French- and Spanish-speaking participants wrote cognates and pseudowords with a letter sequence that was always intrasyllabic in French and intersyllabic in Spanish. In Experiment 3, French-Spanish bilinguals wrote the cognates and pseudowords with the same type of sequences. In the 3 experiments, the critical interletter intervals were longer between syllables than within syllables, indicating that word syllable structure constrains motor production both in French and Spanish. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) data to theoretical implications in two steps: When more TOTs means better retrieval.

Two experiments in which participants named pictured objects with difficult or easier names, and a reanalysis and review of published data, reveal that problematic measures used in previous studies obscured the implications of group differences in tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) rates. In Experiment 1, increased age led to more TOTs for difficult but not easy targets. In Experiment 2, bilinguals had more TOTs than monolinguals for easy targets but fewer TOTs for difficult targets. The authors developed a theoretically motivated measure that clarifies the implications of TOT data by linking all responses elicited in the TOT paradigm with either success or failure in completing 2 retrieval steps in current models of language production. The 2-step analysis reveals a common mechanism for the age and bilingualism effects and implies that age has both positive and negative effects on retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orthographic analogies and early reading: Evidence from a multiple clue word paradigm.

Two experiments using a variation of the clue word analogy task (Goswami, 1986) explored whether children can make orthographic analogies when given multiple clue words, beyond the known effects of purely phonological activation. In Experiment 1, 42 children (mean age 6 years and 8 months) were first taught 3 “clue” words (e.g., fail, mail, jail) and then shown target words sharing orthographic and phonological rimes (e.g., hail), phonological rimes (e.g., veil), orthographic and phonological vowel digraphs (e.g., wait), phonological vowel digraphs (e.g., vein), or unrelated controls (e.g., bard). All word types were advantaged at posttest over unrelated controls. A small additional advantage for orthographic and phonological rimes over phonological rimes was evident in by-participant analysis. Finally, regression analysis showed a specific relationship between onset-rime phonological awareness and orthographic rime clue word task transfer. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with 30 children (M age = 7 years, 0 months) and added a distinct group of children taught multiple clue words sharing vowel digraphs (e.g., gait, maim, maid). Results showed advantages for all words over unrelated controls and a small additional advantage for orthographic and phonological vowel digraphs over phonological vowel digraphs in the by-participant analysis. Overall, results suggest that some young children do have the ability to make orthographic analogies when given multiple exemplars but that most improvement in target word reading reflects purely phonological activation. Practical steps for identifying genuine analogy use in a subset of children are thus described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieval of lexical–syntactic features in tip-of-the tongue states.

Italian speakers who signaled that they were in a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state were asked to recognize the grammatical gender and the initial and the final phonemes of the unavailable word. The proportions of gender and phoneme hits that occurred with "don't know" (DK) responses were adopted as baselines for chance-level performance. Participants were more accurate in recognizing the grammatical gender and the initial but not the final phoneme of target words when they were in TOT than in DK states. The availability of gender in TOT states suggests the independence of syntactic from phonological information in lexical access. However, the retrieval of gender was far from perfect for TOT words, and it was no better than recognition of the initial phoneme. These results are problematic for the notion that the selection of a lemma is synonymous with the retrieval of the word's syntactic features. The implications of these results for the distinction between lemma and lexeme levels of representation in lexical access are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)