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)     

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)     

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)     

Basic processes in reading: Can functional phonological recoding be blocked?

A widely held view is that phonological processing is always involved in lexical access from print, and is automatic in that it cannot be prevented. This claim was assessed in the context of a priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, repetition priming was observed for both pseudohomophone-word pairs (e.g., brane-brain) and morphologically related word pairs (e.g., marked-mark) in the context of lexical decision. In Experiment 2, subjects searched the prime for the presence of a target letter and then made a lexical decision to a subsequent letter string. Phonological priming from a pseudohomophone was eliminated following letter search of the prime, whereas morphological priming persisted. These results are inconsistent with the claim that a) lexical access from print requires preliminary phonological processing, and b) functional phonological processing cannot be blocked. They are, however, consistent with the conclusion that, for intact skilled readers, lexical access can be accomplished on the basis of orthographic processing alone. These results join a growing body of evidence supporting the claim that there exist numerous points in visual word recognition at which processing can be stopped. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for the use of assembled phonology in accessing the meaning of printed words.

The role of assembled phonology in visual word recognition was investigated using a task in which participants judged whether 2 words (e.g., PILLOW–BEAD) were semantically related. Of primary interest was whether it would be more difficult to respond "no" to "false homophones" (e.g., BEAD) of words (BED) that are semantically related to target words than to orthographic controls (BEND). (BEAD is a false homophone of BED because –EAD can be pronounced /εd/.) In Experiment 1, there was an interference effect in the response time data, but not in the error data. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment in which a parafoveal preview was provided for the 2nd word of the pair. A 3rd experiment ruled out explanations of the false homophone effect in terms of inconsistency in spelling-to-sound mappings or inadequate spelling knowledge. It is argued that assembled phonological representations activate meaning in visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prosodic phonological representations early in visual word recognition.

Two experiments examined the nature of the phonological representations used during visual word recognition. We tested whether a minimality constraint (R. Frost, 1998) limits the complexity of early representations to a simple string of phonemes. Alternatively, readers might activate elaborated representations that include prosodic syllable information before lexical access. In a modified lexical decision task (Experiment 1), words were preceded by parafoveal previews that were congruent with a target's initial syllable as well as previews that contained 1 letter more or less than the initial syllable. Lexical decision times were faster in the syllable congruent conditions than in the incongruent conditions. In Experiment 2, we recorded brain electrical potentials (electroencephalograms) during single word reading in a masked priming paradigm. The event-related potential waveform elicited in the syllable congruent condition was more positive 250-350 ms posttarget compared with the waveform elicited in the syllable incongruent condition. In combination, these experiments demonstrate that readers process prosodic syllable information early in visual word recognition in English. They offer further evidence that skilled readers routinely activate elaborated, speechlike phonological representations during silent reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonologically Mediated Priming of Preexisting and New Associations in Young and Older Adults.

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated phonologically mediated priming of preexisting and new associations in word retrieval. Young and older adults completed paired word stems with the first word that came to mind. Priming of preexisting associations occurred when word-stem pairs containing homophones (e.g., beech-s____) showed more completions with the target (e.g., sand) relative to unrelated pairs (e.g., batch-s____), with more priming for subordinate than for dominant homophones. Priming occurred for new associations independent of dominance such that word-stem pairs containing homophones (e.g., beech-l____ and beach-l____) were completed with the same word (e.g., laugh) more often than unrelated pairs (e.g., beech-l____ and batch-l____). No age differences in phonologically mediated priming were found for either type of association, suggesting age equivalence in the use of bottom-up phonological connections. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills.

Three bodies of research that have developed in relative isolation center on each of three kinds of phonological processing: phonological awareness, awareness of the sound structure of language; phonological recoding in lexical access, recoding written symbols into a sound-based representational system to get from the written word to its lexical referent; and phonetic recoding in working memory, recoding written symbols into a sound-based representation system to maintain them efficiently in working memory. In this review we integrate these bodies of research and address the interdependent issues of the nature of phonological abilities and their causal roles in the acquisition of reading skills. Our review supports a causal role for phonological awareness in learning to read, and suggests the possibility of similar causal roles for phonological recoding in lexical access and phonetic recoding in working memory. Most researchers have neglected the probable causal role of learning to read in the development of phonological skills. It is no longer enough to ask whether phonological skills play a causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. The question now is which aspects of phonological processing (e.g., awareness, recoding in lexical access, recoding in working memory) are causally related to which aspects of reading (e.g., word recognition, word analysis, sentence comprehension), at which point in their codevelopment, and what are the directions of these causal relations? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tracking the time course of orthographic information in spoken-word recognition.

Two visual-world experiments evaluated the time course and use of orthographic information in spoken-word recognition using printed words as referents. Participants saw 4 words on a computer screen and listened to spoken sentences instructing them to click on one of the words (e.g., Click on the word bead). The printed words appeared 200 ms before the onset of the spoken target word. In Experiment 1, the display included the target word and a competitor with either a lower degree (e.g., bear) or a higher degree (e.g., bean) of phonological overlap with the target. Both competitors had the same degree of orthographic overlap with the target. There were more fixations to the competitors than to unrelated distractors. Crucially, the likelihood of fixating a competitor did not vary as a function of the amount of phonological overlap between target and competitor. In Experiment 2, the display included the target word and a competitor with either a lower degree (e.g., bare) or a higher degree (e.g., bear) of orthographic overlap with the target. Competitors were homophonous and thus had the same degree of phonological overlap with the target. There were more fixations to higher overlap competitors than to lower overlap competitors, beginning during the temporal interval where initial fixations driven by the vowel are expected to occur. The authors conclude that orthographic information is rapidly activated as a spoken word unfolds and is immediately used in mapping spoken words onto potential printed referents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The functional unit in phonological encoding: Evidence for moraic representation in native Japanese speakers.

Speech production studies have shown that the phonological form of a word is made up of phonemic segments in stress-timed languages (e.g., Dutch) and of syllables in syllable-timed languages (e.g., Chinese). To clarify the functional unit of mora-timed languages, the authors asked native Japanese speakers to perform an implicit priming task (A. S. Meyer, 1990, 1991). In Experiment 1, participants could speed up their production latencies when initial consonant and vowel (CV) of a target word were known in advance but failed to do so when the vowel was unknown. In Experiment 2, prior knowledge of the consonant and glide (Cj) produced no significant priming effect. However, in Experiment 3, significant effects were found for the consonant-vowel coupled with a nasal coda (CVN) and the consonant with a diphthong (CVV), compared with the consonant-vowel alone (CV). These results suggest that the implicit priming effects for Japanese are closely related to the CV-C and CV-V structure, called the mora. The authors discuss cross-linguistic differences in the phonological representation involved in phonological encoding, within current theories of word production. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tracing attention and the activation flow in spoken word planning using eye movements.

The flow of activation from concepts to phonological forms within the word production system was examined in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures while ignoring superimposed distractor pictures that were semantically related, phonologically related, or unrelated. Eye movements and naming latencies were recorded. The distractor pictures affected the latencies of gaze shifting and vocal naming. The magnitude of the phonological effects increased linearly with latency, excluding lapses of attention as the cause of the effects. In Experiment 2, no distractor effects were obtained when both pictures were named. When pictures with superimposed distractor words were named or the words were read in Experiment 3, the words influenced the latencies of gaze shifting and picture naming, but the pictures yielded no such latency effects in word reading. The picture-word asymmetry was obtained even with equivalent reading and naming latencies. The picture-picture effects suggest that activation spreads continuously from concepts to phonological forms, whereas the picture-word asymmetry indicates that the amount of activation is limited and task dependent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Evidence for distributivity effects in comprehension.

In the current article, we introduce a new methodology for detecting whether a word in a sentence is conceptually represented as plural and use it to shed light on a debate about whether comprehenders interpret singular indefinite noun phrases within a distributed predicate as plural during online reading. Experiment 1 extended a methodology previously used by Berent, Pinker, Tzelgov, Bibi, and Goldfarb (2005) to test individual words or word pairs by having readers judge, at a critical word, whether 1 or 2 words appeared on a computer screen while performing self-paced reading on a sentence presented in 1- and 2-word chunks. In line with Berent et al., Experiment 1 indicated that participants were slower to judge that 1 word was on the screen when the word was plural (e.g., cats) than when it was singular (e.g., cat). Experiment 2 used this paradigm to show that readers build different conceptual representations for distributed versus collective predicates and interpret a singular indefinite noun phrase within a distributed predicate as plural (e.g., Kaup, Kelter, & Habel, 2002; but cf. Filik, Paterson, & Liversedge, 2004; Paterson, Filik, & Liversedge, 2008). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preserved semantic priming effect in alexia

BH, a left-handed patient with alexia and nonfluent aphasia, was presented with a lexical-decision task in which words and pronounceable pseudowords were preceded by semantically related or unrelated picture primes (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, BH was given an explicit reading task using the word lists from Experiment 1. Performance on Experiment 2 disclosed severe reading deficits in both oral reading and semantic matching of the words to pictures. However, in Experiment 1, BH demonstrated a significant semantic priming effect, responding more accurately and more quickly to words preceded by related primes than by unrelated primes. The present results suggest that even in a patient with severe alexia, implicit access to semantic information can be preserved in the absence of explicit identification. The possibility of categorical gradient in implicit activation (living vs. nonliving) in BH was also discussed, which, however, needs to be clarified in the further investigation.     

Phonological processes and the perception of phonotactically illegal consonant clusters

The perception of consonant clusters that are phonotactically illegal word initially in English (e.g., /tl/,/sr/) was investigated to determine whether listeners' phonological knowledge of the language influences speech processing. Experiment 1 examined whether the phonotactic context effect (Massaro & Cohen, 1983), a bias toward hearing illegal sequences (e.g.,/tl/) as legal (e.g., /tr/), is more likely due to knowledge of the legal phoneme combinations in English or to a frequency effect. In Experiment 2, Experiment 1 was repeated with the clusters occurring word medially to assess whether phonotactic rules of syllabification modulate the phonotactic effect. Experiment 3 examined whether vowel epenthesis, another phonological process, might also affect listeners' perception of illegal sequences as legal by biasing them to hear a vowel between the consonants of the cluster (e.g., /talae/). Results suggest that knowledge of the phonotactically permissible sequences in English can affect phoneme processing in multiple ways.     

Dual task performance after diazepam intake: can resource depletion explain the benzodiazepine-induced amnesia?

It was tested whether a depletion in resources can account for the benzodiazepine-induced memory impairment. In two experiments, it was examined whether dividing attention had a disproportionately detrimental effect on learning semantically related and unrelated word pairs after diazepam intake. Word pairs had to be learned in both a single task condition and while performing a visual discrimination task concurrently (dual task condition). Moreover, the complexity of the visual discrimination task was manipulated systematically. Diazepam (15 mg, orally) or placebo was administered in a double-blind, between-subjects design. Subjects after diazepam intake were clearly impaired in learning unrelated word pairs, but not in learning related word pairs. Dividing attention in the dual task condition was associated with a reduction in learning unrelated word pairs, but this was not disproportionately reduced after diazepam intake. Moreover, the magnitude of resource depletion did not correlate with the severity of the diazepam-induced memory impairment. In general, the pattern of results does not support the hypothesis that a depletion of resources can explain the benzodiazepine-induced memory impairment.     

ERP Evidence for the Time Course of Graphic, Phonological, and Semantic Information in Chinese Meaning and Pronunciation Decisions.

Two words that varied in their relationship were presented sequentially to Chinese readers who made meaning and pronunciation decisions. In the meaning task, they decided whether the words had the same meaning. In the pronunciation task, they decided whether the words had the same pronunciation. In both tasks, the word pairs represented 1 of 4 relationships: graphically similar, homophonic, semantically related, or unrelated. Event related potentials (ERP) recordings made from the onset of the 2nd word suggested a temporal unfolding of graphic, phonological, and semantic effects. Specifically, graphically-related pairs produced a smaller P200 in the pronunciation task and a smaller N400 in the meaning task. Homophones produced reduced N400 component with bilateral sources in the meaning task. (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)     

Word recognition and identification: Do word-frequency effects reflect lexical access?

Tested the assumption that word-frequency effects on recognition result from differential ease of access to lexical entries for high- and low-frequency words. Previous researchers (McCann & Besner, 1987) found that pseudohomophones (e.g., TRAX) were named faster and more accurately than controls (e.g., PRAX), but pseudohomophone performance was not sensitive to base word frequency. In Exp 1 of the present series, performance on the same set of pseudohomophones and controls was assessed in the context of the lexical decision task (does this letter string spell a word?). Pseudohomophone performance was impaired relative to controls, which is commonly taken as evidence of contact with entries in a phonological lexicon. As in the naming task, however, pseudohomophone performance was insensitive to base word frequency. In Exp 2, pseudohomophone performance was examined in the context of a phonological lexical decision task (does this letter string sound like an English word?). Pseudohomophone performance was sensitive to base word frequency in phonological lexical decision. Word-frequency effects in binary decision tasks such as lexical decision and phonological lexical decision are attributed to a familiarity discriminatiion process that contributes bias to the decision stage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Code-specific processes in word naming: Evidence supporting a dual-route model of word recognition.

This research examined visual and phonological coding in visual word recognition, Participants named words while performing 1 of 3 memory tasks. The difficulty of the memory tasks was varied. In Experiment 1, increasing the difficulty of a digit-memory load resulted in slower naming of low-frequency regular (e.g., wink) words but faster naming of low-frequency exception (e.g., pint) words. In Experiment 2, increasing the difficulty of a dot-memory load slowed naming of low-frequency exception words more than naming of low-frequency regular words. In Experiment 3, increasing the difficulty of a tone-memory load resulted in slower naming of both low-frequency regular and exception words. The results are consistent with dual-route assumptions concerning code-specific processes in word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)