Hemiface contributions to hemispheric dominance in visual speech perception.

Lateralized displays are used widely to investigate hemispheric asymmetry in language perception. However, few studies have used lateralized displays to investigate hemispheric asymmetry in visual speech perception, and those that have yielded mixed results. This issue was investigated in the current study by presenting visual speech to either the left hemisphere (LH) or the right hemisphere (RH) using the face as recorded (normal), a mirror image of the normal face (reversed), and chimeric displays constructed by duplicating and reversing just one hemiface (left or right) to form symmetrical images (left-duplicated, right-duplicated). The projection of displays to each hemisphere was controlled precisely by an automated eye-tracking technique. Visual speech perception showed the same, clear LH advantage for normal and reversed displays, a greater LH advantage for right-duplicated displays, and no hemispheric difference for left-duplicated displays. Of particular note is that perception of LH displays was affected greatly by the presence of right-hemiface information, whereas perception of RH displays was unaffected by changes in hemiface content. Thus, when investigated under precise viewing conditions, the indications are not only that the dominant processes of visual speech perception are located in the LH but that these processes are uniquely sensitive to right-hemiface information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hemispheric differences in indexical specificity effects in spoken word recognition.

Variability in talker identity, one type of indexical variation, has demonstrable effects on the speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition. Furthermore, neuropsychological evidence suggests that indexical and linguistic information may be represented and processed differently in the 2 cerebral hemispheres, and is consistent with findings from the visual domain. For example, in visual word recognition, changes in font affect processing differently depending on which hemisphere initially processes the input. The present study examined whether hemispheric differences exist in spoken language as well. In 4 long-term repetition-priming experiments, the authors examined responses to stimuli that were primed by stimuli that matched or mismatched in talker identity. The results demonstrate that indexical variability can affect participants' perception of spoken words differently in the 2 hemispheres. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Binocular fixation disparity in single word displays.

It has been claimed that the recognition of words displayed in isolation is affected by the precise location at which they are fixated. However, this putative role for fixation location has yet to be reconciled with the finding from reading research that binocular fixations are often misaligned and, therefore, more than 1 location in a word is often fixated simultaneously. The accuracy and alignment of binocular fixations during single word processing have not been assessed previously. To investigate this issue, words were presented for lexical decision at locations around a central fixation point. Eye-tracking data revealed that participants often fixated inaccurately and that fixations were frequently misaligned, but that this did not affect word recognition. The findings show that binocular fixation disparity is pervasive even in single word displays and a potential source of confound for research into effects of fixation location on word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition in bilinguals: Phonological priming from the second to the first language.

In this study, the authors show that cross-lingual phonological priming is possible not only from the 1st language (L1) to the 2nd language (L2), but also from L2 to L1. In addition, both priming effects were found to have the same magnitude and to not be related to differences in word naming latencies between L1 and L2. The findings are further evidence against language-selective access models of bilingual word processing and are more in line with strong phonological models of visual word recognition than with the traditional dual-route models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alphabet-letter instruction on young children's word recognition.

This study examined the influence of letter-name instruction on beginning word recognition. Thirty-three preschool children from low-socioeconomic-status families participated in 16 weeks of letter-name or comprehension-focused instruction. After instruction, children's ability to learn 3 types of word spellings was examined: words phonetically spelled with letters children had been taught (e.g., BL for ball), words phonetically spelled with letters children had not been taught, and words with visually distinct letter spellings that were nonphonetic. Children who received letter-name instruction learned words phonetically spelled with letters included in instruction significantly better than other words. Children receiving comprehension instruction performed significantly better on visually distinct word spellings. Results demonstrate the beneficial effects of alphabet-letter instruction on beginning phonetic word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Native language influences on word recognition in a second language: A megastudy.

Many studies have reported that word recognition in a second language (L2) is affected by the native language (L1). However, little is known about the role of the specific language combination of the bilinguals. To investigate this issue, the authors administered a word identification task (progressive demasking) on 1,025 monosyllabic English (L2) words to native speakers of French, German, and Dutch. A regression approach was adopted, including a large number of within- and between-language variables as predictors. A substantial overlap of reaction time patterns was found across the groups of bilinguals, showing that word recognition results obtained for one group of bilinguals generalize to bilinguals with different mother tongues. Moreover, among the set of significant predictors, only one between-language variable was present (cognate status); all others reflected characteristics of the target language. Thus, although influences across languages exist, word recognition in L2 by proficient bilinguals is primarily determined by within-language factors, whereas cross-language effects appear to be limited. An additional comparison of the bilingual data with a native control group showed that there are subtle but significant differences between L1 and L2 processing. (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)     

Additive and interactive effects on response time distributions in visual word recognition.

Across 3 different word recognition tasks, distributional analyses were used to examine the joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency on underlying response time distributions. Consistent with the extant literature, stimulus quality and word frequency produced additive effects in lexical decision, not only in the means but also in the shape of the response time distributions, supporting an early normalization process that is separate from processes influenced by word frequency. In contrast, speeded pronunciation and semantic classification produced interactive influences of word frequency and stimulus quality, which is a fundamental prediction from interactive activation models of lexical processing. These findings suggest that stimulus normalization is specific to lexical decision and is driven by the task's emphasis on familiarity-based information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Homophone effects in visual word recognition depend on homophone type and task demands.

This experiment examined how the characteristics of homophones and their mates influence homophone effects, as a function of task demands. Two types of homophones were presented: 1) low-frequency homophones with higher-frequency mates that are not animal names (e.g., maid--made), and 2) low-frequency homophones with mates that are, on average, of equivalent frequency and are animal names (e.g., foul--fowl). We observed a double dissociation: In the lexical decision task (LDT), there was a homophone effect for the first type of homophones but not for the second, whereas in the semantic categorization task (SCT) the opposite was true. These results suggest that in these tasks the effects of homophony arise when the homophone's mate creates competition in terms of the type of processing emphasized in the task, namely, orthographic processing in the LDT and semantic processing in the SCT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence context, word recognition, and repetition blindness.

When the sentence She ran her best time yet in the rice last week is displayed using rapid serial visual presentation, viewers sometimes misread rice as race (M. C. Potter, A. Moryadas,1. Abrams, & A. Noel, 1993). Seven experiments combined misreading and repetition blindness (RB) paradigms to determine whether misreading of a word because of biasing sentence context represents a genuine perceptual effect. In Experiments 1-4, misreading a word either caused or prevented RB for a downstream word, depending on whether orthographic similarity was increased or decreased. Additional experiments examined temporal parameters of misreading RB and tested the hypothesis that RB results from reconstructive memory processes. Results suggest that the effect of prior context occurs during perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Frequency effects in spoken and visual word recognition: Evidence from dual-task methodologies.

The authors report 3 dual-task experiments concerning the locus of frequency effects in word recognition. In all experiments, Task 1 entailed a simple perceptual choice and Task 2 involved lexical decision. In Experiment 1, an underadditive effect of word frequency arose for spoken words. Experiment 2 also showed underadditivity for visual lexical decision. It was concluded that word frequency exerts an influence prior to any dual-task bottleneck. A related finding in similar dual-task experiments is Task 2 response postponement at short stimulus onset asynchronies. This was explored in Experiment 3, and it was shown that response postponement was equivalent for both spoken and visual word recognition. These results imply that frequency-sensitive processes operate early and automatically. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reliability and magnitude of perceptual asymmetries in a dichotic word recognition task.

The hypothesis that control of idiosyncratic attention deployment and retrieval strategies would improve the reliability and magnitude of laterality effects obtained in an auditory word recognition task was investigated. Sixty participants completed a dichotic word recognition task under 1 of 3 conditions. In free recall, they reported the 2 words presented on each trial (1 to each ear). In focused attention, they reported only the word presented to a prespecified ear. In target detection, they indicated whether a target word was presented to either ear on each trial. Results showed that the target-detection condition produced the largest and most reliable laterality effects compared with the other 2 conditions. The mechanisms likely to be responsible for these findings are discussed. (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)     

Differential age effects for case and hue mixing in visual word recognition.

The authors compare older adults' lexical-decision data with younger adults' data reported in P. Allen, A. F. Smith, et al. (2002). On the basis of their work, it was proposed that consistent-case words would be processed by the faster holistic (magnodominated) stream, but that mixed-case words would be processed by the slower analytic (interblob-dominated or blob-dominated) streams. Hue mixing was predicted to have no effect on consistent-case performance, but mixed-hue/mixed-case words were predicted to be recognized faster than monochrome/mixed-case words. Younger adults showed the predicted results, but older adults did not. These results suggest that holistic central processes are maintained, but that older adults exhibited an analytic decrement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False memory in aging: Effects of emotional valence on word recognition accuracy.

Memory is susceptible to distortions. Valence and increasing age are variables known to affect memory accuracy and may increase false alarm production. Interaction between these variables and their impact on false memory was investigated in 36 young (18-28 years) and 36 older (61-83 years) healthy adults. At study, participants viewed lists of neutral words orthographically related to negative, neutral, or positive critical lures (not presented). Memory for these words was subsequently tested with a remember-know procedure. At test, items included the words seen at study and their associated critical lures, as well as sets of orthographically related neutral words not seen at study and their associated unstudied lures. Positive valence was shown to have two opposite effects on older adults' discrimination of the lures: It improved correct rejection of unstudied lures but increased false memory for critical lures (i.e., lures associated with words studied previously). Thus, increased salience triggered by positive valence may disrupt memory accuracy in older adults when discriminating among similar events. These findings likely reflect a source memory deficit due to decreased efficiency in cognitive control processes with aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In search of perceptual influences of sentence context on word recognition.

A major issue in the study of word perception concerns the nature (perceptual or nonperceptual) of sentence context effects. The authors compared effects of legal, word replacement, nonword replacement, and transposed contexts on target word performance using the Reicher-Wheeler task to suppress nonperceptual influences of contextual and lexical constraint. Experiment 1 showed superior target word performance for legal (e.g., "it began to flap/flop") over all other contexts and for transposed over word replacement and nonword replacement contexts. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with higher constraint contexts (e.g., "the cellar is dark/dank") and Experiment 3 showed that strong constraint contexts improved performance for congruent (e.g., "born to be wild") but not incongruent (e.g., mild) target words. These findings support the view that the very perception of words can be enhanced when words are presented in legal sentence contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention constraints of semantic activation during visual word recognition.

The reduction of semantic priming following letter search of the prime suggests that semantic activation can be blocked if attention is allocated to the letter level during word processing. Is this true even for the very fast-acting component of semantic activation? To test this, the authors explored semantic priming of lexical decision at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of either 200 or 1000 ms. Following semantic prime processing, priming occurred at both SOAs. In contrast, no priming occurred at the long SOA following letter-level processing. Of greatest interest, at the short SOA there was priming following the less demanding consonant/vowel task but not following the more attention-demanding letter search task. Hence, semantic activation can occur even when attention is directed to the letter level, provided there are sufficient resources to support this activation. The authors conclude that the default setting during word recognition is for fast-acting activation of the semantic system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual Interactions Between Bilaterally Presented Words: What You Get Is Often Not What You See.

Bilateral presentations of words, 1 in the left visual hemifield (LVF) and 1 in the right (RVF), are used widely in studies of hemispheric asymmetry. However, although words shown centrally (i.e., nonlaterally) produce perceptual interactions in which 1 word alters the perceived identity of the other, perceptual interactions between bilaterally presented words have never been reported. To investigate this issue, the authors used brief, bilateral displays of words (e.g., romp-ramp) presented simultaneously. An eye tracker and forced-choice task ensured appropriate presentation and testing. Report accuracy was greatest for RVF words. However, this was accompanied by perceptual interactions that occurred almost exclusively in responses to LVF words, indicating that RVF words often altered the perceived identity of LVF words but not vice versa. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition during reading is followed by subvocal articulation.

Three experiments examined whether the identification of a visual word is followed by its subvocal articulation during reading. An irrelevant spoken word (ISW) that was identical, phonologically similar, or dissimilar to a visual target word was presented when the eyes moved to the target in the course of sentence reading. Sentence reading was further accompanied by either a sequential finger tapping task (Experiment 1) or an articulatory suppression task (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 revealed sound-specific interference from a phonologically similar ISW during posttarget viewing. This interference was absent in Experiment 2, where similar and dissimilar ISWs impeded target and posttarget reading equally. Experiment 3 showed that articulatory suppression left the lexical processing of visual words intact and that it did not diminish the influence of visual word recognition on eye guidance. The presence of sound-specific interference during posttarget reading in Experiment 1 is attributed to deleterious effects of a phonologically similar ISW on the subvocal articulation of a target. Its absence in Experiment 2 is attributed to the suppression of a target’s subvocal articulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word recognition: From letters to meaning.

Reviews the book, Basic Processes in Reading Visual Word Recognition by Derek Besner and Glyn W. Humphreys (see record 1990-99017-000). While there has been an increase in the amount of work on many different aspects of reading, as Besner and Humphreys point out in the overview to their book, the vast majority of the research on the topic of reading in the past twenty years has been concerned with the processes involved in word recognition. For this reason, Besner and Humphreys have attempted to bring together studies on topics which are both relevant to current debates in the field of word recognition, and which are likely to be important for future developments in the field. They have compiled an edited volume consisting of their overview and eight additional chapters. The editors have attempted to span the continuum of processes involved in word recognition and thus have included chapters which cover topics ranging from the visual analysis of words, to those on the influence of semantic factors on word recognition. The authors of these chapters comprise an impressive list of researchers in the field of word recognition, with the majority of chapters being authored by leading researchers on the topic. Given the stature of the authors and the range of topics covered, in theory this volume should provide a very thorough overview of current theory and research on reading. There is no question that each of the chapters is interesting and important in its own right. However, in practice the volume as a whole fell somewhat short of my expectations. The different tacts taken by different authors has resulted in a very uneven coverage of the current debates in the field. Notwithstanding these criticisms, I am sure that the majority of researchers in this field will consider this volume to be an important contribution. The book would provide a very useful addition to graduate courses in cognitive sciences and as a supplemental text for an undergraduate course on the psychology of reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)