Accessing spoken words: The importance of word onsets.

Approaches to spoken word recognition differ in the importance they assign to word onsets during lexical access. This research contrasted the hypothesis that lexical access is strongly directional with the hypothesis that word onsets are less important than the overall goodness of fit between input and lexical form. A cross-modal priming technique was used to investigate the extent to which a rhyme prime (a prime that differs only in its first segment from the word that is semantically associated with the visual probe) is as effective a prime as the original word itself. Earlier research had shown that partial primes that matched from word onset were very effective cross-modal primes. The present results show that, irrespective of whether the rhyme prime was a real word or not, and irrespective of the amount of overlap between the rhyme prime and the original word, the rhymes are much less effective primes than the full word. In fact, no overall priming effect could be detected at all except under conditions in which the competitor environment was very sparse. This suggests that word onsets do have a special status in the lexical access of spoken words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Influence of case type, word frequency, and exposure duration on visual word recognition

The authors report 4 lexical decision experiments in which case type, word frequency, and exposure duration were varied. These data indicated that there is a larger mixed-case disadvantage for nonwords than for words for longer duration presentations of targets. However, when targets were presented for 100 ms (followed by a postdisplay pattern mask), a larger mixed-case disadvantage occurred for words than for nonwords. For word frequency, the data from Experiments 1, 2, and 3 revealed a slightly larger mixed- case disadvantage for higher frequency words than for lower frequency words. (There was additivity between word frequency and case type for experiment 4.) These results are consistent with a holistically biased, hybrid model of visual word recognition but inconsistent with analytically biased, hybrid models of word recognition, such as the process model (Besner & Johnston, 1989) and the interactive-activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981).     

Nonfluency, information, and word length.

Investigated whether previously reported relationships between nonfluency and information value in 8 undergraduate stutterers' spontaneous speech were mediated by other more basic relationships. Information value was found to be strongly related to word length, but not to sentence position, initial sound, or occurrence of nonfluency. Also, word length was related to nonfluency, suggesting that previous relationships between stuttering and information might have been an artifact of the relationship of both variables to word length. Reexamination of previous data suggests somewhat similar conclusions for stutterers when reading, but not for nonstutterers either reading or speaking. Thus, the properties of nonfluency in stutterers may be somewhat different from those in normals, suggesting that stuttering is not simply a pathological exaggeration of normal nonfluency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stuttering: discoordination of phonation with articulation and respiration

Complexity of phonatory and respiratory adjustments was systematically simplified in 30 adult stutterers under three speaking conditions: voiced, whispered, and articulated without phonation. Stuttering was reduced considerably when whispering and was practically eliminated when articulating silently. The possibility that stuttering consistently results from complexity of phonatory coordinations with articulation and respiration was strongly supported. Increased speaking rates under conditions that decreased stuttering seemed to be evidence that efficient rhythmical flow of speech is facilitated by simplification of phonatory and respiratory adjustments.     

Word sequence, word frequency, and free recall.

3 groups of 22 undergraduates each were asked to memorize lists of either (a) all common words, (b) all rare words, or (c) a mixed list of alternating common and rare words. In terms of trials to criterion in free recall the groups were rank ordered rare > common > mixed. The typical high-frequency easier-recall effect was reversed in the mixed list where rare words were recalled more efficiently than common words. (French summary) (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)     

Threat-expectancy, word frequencies, and perceptual pre-recognition hypotheses.

"In order to investigate whether delayed perceptual report of threatening words would occur under conditions of threat-expectancy in an experimental setup which makes possible examination of the operation of possible conscious inhibition as well as differential word frequencies, 59 Ss were given a series of 16 booklets, each containing 30 carbon copies of one five-letter stimulus word, to decipher. Eight of these words were considered neutral and eight threatening… . Significantly more trials were required for correct report of threat words as compared to neutral ones. No correlation between number of trials required for correct identification of the test words and word frequency was found… . The findings are interpreted as consistent with a concept of perceptual defense." 20 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Representational aspects of word imageability and word frequency as assessed through word association.

Assessed the effects of word imageability and word frequency (WF) in word association (WA). Exps 1 and 2 employed the discrete WA task, whereas Exp 3 used the continued WA task. Data from Exps 1–3 showed that word imageability strongly determines responding in WA, whereas WF hardly affects it. Exp 4 (lexical decision) and 5 (word naming) explored the possibility that WF effects on the word-recognition stage in WA might have interfered with any effect of WF on the association-retrieval stage, a possibility that was not borne out by data. Exps 6–8 examined whether the absence of frequency effects on WA in Exps 1–3 might have been due to the fact that the WF classes had a restricted range. A new set of stimulus materials was constructed, with frequency classes further apart. Some small effects of this variable on WA were found. Results point out that the concept nodes for high-imageability words contain more information than those of low-imageability words and that relatively strong links depart fron the former type of nodes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physiological need, verbal frequency, and word association.

"Fifty college men and women were deprived of food and water for 0, 10, and 24 hours, and were presented with a word association list of 24 words which has been matched for commonness and need-relevance. Each S was tested only once. The results show that (a) more food, water, and neutral word association responses were made to food, water, and neutral stimulus words, respectively; (b) there was an increase in the number of food and water responses up to the tenth hour, but a decrease thereafter; and (c) with protracted periods of deprivation the number of responses pertaining to acts instrumental to need satisfaction increased while the number of responses involving the names of need satisfiers decreased." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gradient sensitivity to within-category variation in words and syllables.

Five experiments monitored eye movements in phoneme and lexical identification tasks to examine the effect of within-category subphonetic variation on the perception of stop consonants. Experiment 1 demonstrated gradient effects along voice-onset time (VOT) continua made from natural speech, replicating results with synthetic speech (B. McMurray, M. K. Tanenhaus, & R. N. Aslin, 2002). Experiments 2-5 used synthetic VOT continua to examine effects of response alternatives (2 vs. 4), task (lexical vs. phoneme decision), and type of token (word vs. consonant-vowel). A gradient effect of VOT in at least one half of the continuum was observed in all conditions. These results suggest that during online spoken word recognition, lexical competitors are activated in proportion to their continuous distance from a category boundary. This gradient processing may allow listeners to anticipate upcoming acoustic-phonetic information in the speech signal and dynamically compensate for acoustic variability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of word frequency, word predictability, and font difficulty on the eye movements of young and older readers.

Young adult and older readers' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences containing target words that varied in frequency or predictability. In addition, half of the sentences were printed in a font that was easy to read (Times New Roman) and the other half were printed in a font that was more difficult to read (Old English). Word frequency, word predictability, and font difficulty effects were apparent in the eye movement data of both groups of readers. In the fixation time data, the pattern of results was the same, but the older readers had larger frequency and predictability effects than the younger readers. The older readers skipped words more often than the younger readers (as indicated by their skipping rate on selected target words), but they made more regressions back to the target words and more regressions overall. The E-Z Reader model was used as a platform to evaluate the results, and simulations using the model suggest that lexical processing is slowed in older readers and that, possibly as a result of this, they adopt a more risky reading strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: Voluntary versus automatic allocation.

The hypothesis that abrupt visual onsets capture attention automatically, as suggested by S. Yantis and J. Jonides (see record 1985-19225-001), was tested in four experiments. A centrally located cue directed attention to one of several stimulus positions in preparation for the identification of a target letter embedded in an array of distractor letters. In all experiments, one stimulus (either the target or one of the distractors) had an abrupt onset; the remaining letters did not. The effectiveness of the cue was manipulated (varying either its duration or its predictive validity) to test whether abrupt onsets capture attention even when subjects are in a highly focused attentional state. Results showed that onsets do not necessarily capture attention in violation of an observer's intentions. A mechanism for partially automatic attentional capture by abrupt onset is proposed, and the diagnosticity of the intentionality criterion for automaticity is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on anxiety, instructions, and word association performance.

In earlier work, a word association test (WAT) was presented under 2 conditions as a "sensitive personality test" and under neutral conditions. The resultant WAT scores were correlated with 2 tests of anxiety. The present work investigates the results of presenting the WAT as a sensitive measure of intelligence rather than personality. Again, the resultant scores were correlated with measures of anxiety. Sarason's Test Anxiety Scale (1958) appeared to be more sensitive to S's anxiety in the experimental situation than Taylor's MAS or Bendig's (1956) Lack of Protection Scale. The results are related to the nature and theory of anxiety. From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3HK53S. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contingent capture for onsets and offsets: Attentional set for perceptual transients.

Four experiments were conducted to examine whether attentional set affects the ability of visual transients (onsets and offsets) to capture attention. In the experiments, visual search for an identity-defined target was conducted. In the first 3 experiments, the target display either onset entirely or was revealed by offsetting camouflaging line segments to reveal letters. Prior to the target display, there was a noninformative cue, either an onset or an offset, at one of the potential target locations. Cues that shared the same transient feature as the target display captured attention. The lack of predictable target transients led to attentional capture by all forms of transients. The final experiments with luminance changes without offsets or onsets showed attentional capture when the luminance changes were large. The results suggest that attentional set can be broadly or narrowly tuned to detect changes in luminance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stuttering, language, and cognition: a review and a model of stuttering as suprasegmental sentence plan alignment (SPA)

Extant models of stuttering do not account for the emergence of stuttering at the onset of productive language use; the greater incidence of stuttering during spontaneous speech, on complex sentences, and at sentence-initial positions; the greater incidence of stuttering in bilinguals' 2nd language; the apparent deficiency of stutterers in expressive and receptive language skills; the prevalence of spontaneous recovery from stuttering; and the lack of chronic physiological or articulatory deficits in stuttering children's fluent speech. The author presents a model of stuttering as points of suprasegmental sentence plan alignment (SPA). Such alignment processes occur when, due to on-line sentence production processes, SPAs adopted prior to utterance initiation need to be aligned with revised SPAs. This model parsimoniously accounts for the findings reviewed in the article.     

Bacterial translocation and wasting in stressed mice

The structures of YM-51084 and YM-51085, new protease inhibitors produced by Streptomyces sp. Q21705, were determined by 1H- and 13C-NMR and mass spectrometry. Both were characterized by the basic structures of an acyl-tripeptide. YM-51084 was elucidated to be isovaleryl-tyrosyl-valyl-phenylalaninal and YM-51085 was the reduced phenylalaninol form of YM-51084. These compounds proved to strongly inhibit human kidney cathepsin L; the IC50 values being 9.6 x 10(-9) M and 3.5 x 10(-7) M, respectively.     

Orthographic, phonological, and articulatory contributions to masked letter and word priming.

A series of experiments assessed masked priming for letters and words that are visually similar (SIM) and dissimilar (DIS) in upper- and lowercase formats. For letters, robust DIS priming was obtained in a naming task, but this priming did not extend to a variety of non-naming tasks. For words, robust DIS priming was obtained in both naming and non-naming tasks. SIM letter and word priming extended to all tasks, but the effects were generally small for letters. The restricted set of conditions for DIS letter priming suggests that this priming is mediated by phonological-articulatory processes, and the generality of DIS word priming argues that abstract orthographic codes mediate these effects. Consistent with this conclusion, priming between homophones (for both letters and words) was found in a naming task, but little word homophone priming was obtained in a lexical decision task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)