Phonological words and stuttering on function words

Stuttering on function words was examined in 51 people who stutter. The people who stutter were subdivided into young (2 to 6 years), middle (6 to 9 years), and older (9 to 12 years) child groups; teenagers (13 to 18 years); and adults (20 to 40 years). As reported by previous researchers, children up to about age 9 stuttered more on function words (pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs), whereas older people tended to stutter more on content words (nouns, main verbs, adverbs, adjectives). Function words in early positions in utterances, again as reported elsewhere, were more likely to be stuttered than function words at later positions in an utterance. This was most apparent for the younger groups of speakers. For the remaining analyses, utterances were segmented into phonological words on the basis of Selkirk's work (1984). Stuttering rate was higher when function words occurred in early phonological word positions than other phonological word positions whether the phonological word appeared in initial position in an utterance or not. Stuttering rate was highly dependent on whether the function word occurred before or after the single content word allowed in Selkirk's (1984) phonological words. This applied, once again, whether the phonological word was utterance-initial or not. It is argued that stuttering of function words before their content word in phonological words in young speakers is used as a delaying tactic when the forthcoming content word is not prepared for articulation.     

Semantic processing of spoken words in Alzheimer's disease: an electrophysiological study

Patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD) have severe difficulties in tasks requiring the use of semantic knowledge. The semantic deficits associated with AD have been extensively studied by using behavioral methods. Many of these studies indicate that AD patients have a general deficit in voluntary access to semantic representations but that the structure of the representations themselves might be preserved. However, several studies also provide evidence that to some extent semantic representations in AD may in fact be degraded. Recently, a few studies have utilized event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that are sensitive to semantic factors in order to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of the semantic impairment in AD. Interest has focused on the N400 component, which is known to reflect the on-line semantic processing of linguistic and pictorial stimuli. The results from studies of N400 changes in AD remain somewhat controversial: Some studies report normal or enlarged N400 components in AD, whereas others report diminished ones. One issue not reported in previous studies is whether word-elicited ERPs other than N400 remain normal in AD. In the present study our aim was to find out whether the ERP waveforms N1, P2, N400, and Late Positive Component (LPC) to semantically congruous and incongruous spoken words are abnormal in AD and whether such abnormalities specifically reflect deficiencies in semantic activation in AD. Auditory ERPs from 20 scalp sites to semantically congruous and incongruous final words in spoken sentences were recorded from 17 healthy elderly adults and 9 AD patients. The early ERP waveforms N1 and P2 were relatively normal for the AD patients, but the N400 and LPC effects (amplitude difference between congruous and incongruous conditions) were significantly reduced. We interpret the present results as showing that semantic-conceptual activation and other high-level integration processes are defective in AD. However, a word congruity effect earlier than N400 (phonological mismatch negativity), reflecting lexical selection processes, is at least to some extent preserved in AD.     

Phonological recoding of nonword orthographic rime primes.

The effectiveness of nonword orthographic rime primes as a function of the regularity (as defined by grapheme-phoneme correspondence [GPC] rules) of typical pronunciation was examined in this research. In Experiments 1 and 2, predictions from GPC and orthographic rime unit accounts converged, but in Experiments 3 and 4 they diverged. Experiment 1 showed that when nonword orthographic rimes were used to prime consistent regular words (e.g., mist) and atypically irregular words (e.g., pint), reliable priming was observed for regular words, but priming of atypically irregular words occurred only in the 2nd block of trials, after the orthographic rime prime itself had been primed by the Block 1 presentation of the target word. In subsequent experiments, only the 1st block of trials was examined. Experiment 2 replicated selective priming of consistent regular words observed in Block 1 of Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, nonword orthographic rimes were as effective at priming typically irregular target words (e.g., grind) as they were in priming inconsistent but typically regular target words (e.g., flint)… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological recoding and orthographic learning: A direct test of the self-teaching hypothesis

According to the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995), word-specific orthographic representations are acquired primarily as a result of the self-teaching opportunities provided by the phonological recoding of novel letter strings. This hypothesis was tested by asking normal second graders to read aloud short texts containing embedded pseudoword targets. Three days later, target spellings were correctly identified more often, named more quickly, and spelled more accurately than alternate homophonic spellings. Experiment 2 examined whether this rapid orthographic learning can be attributed to mere visual exposure to target strings. It was found that viewing the target letter strings under conditions designed to minimize phonological processing significantly attenuated orthographic learning. Experiment 3 went on to show that this reduced orthographic learning was not attributable to alternative nonphonological factors (brief exposure durations or decontextualized presentation). The results of a fourth experiment suggested that the contribution of pure visual exposure to orthographic learning is marginal. It was concluded that phonological recoding is critical to the acquisition of word-specific orthographic representations as proposed by the self-teaching hypothesis.     

Semantic processing and memory for attended and unattended words in dichotic listening: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence.

Thirty-two Ss studied words presented to 1 ear, while ignoring a concurrent word list presented to the opposite ear. The N400 component of the event-related potentials elicited by attended words was modulated by semantic priming between successive words. The N400 elicited by unattended words was insensitive to semantic manipulation. Recognition memory was better for attended than for unattended words. However, the percentage of false positives was elevated equally for lures that were semantically related to "old" words, whether they had been attended or unattended. Words that were initially attended induced similar repetition effects in a lexical decision task as words that were initially unattended. Hence, both attended and unattended words are semantically processed and activate semantic representations. However, attended words form traces that are subsequently more available to conscious recollection than unattended words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The representation of Hebrew words: evidence from the obligatory contour principle

The Hebrew root morpheme typically consists of three consonants. Hebrew allows a gemination of a root consonant, but constrains its location [McCarthy, J. (1979). Formal problems in semitic phonology and morphology. Cambridge, MA; MIT Ph.D. dissertation. Distributed by Indiana University Linguistics Club. Garland Press, New York, 1985]. A gemination of a root-consonant is permitted at the end of the root (e.g., [mss]), but not at its beginning (e.g., [ssm]). Two experiments examined readers' sensitivity to the structure of the root morpheme by obtaining ratings for nonwords derived from nonroots. Root-initial gemination (e.g., [ssm]) was judged unacceptable compared to root-final gemination (e.g., [mss]) or no gemination controls (e.g., [psm]). The sensitivity to root structure emerged regardless of the position of the root in the word. These results have several implications. (1) Our findings demonstrate morphological decomposition. Hebrew speakers' ratings reflect a phonological constraint on the location of geminates. Being the domain of this constraint, the root morpheme must form a separate constituent in the representation of Hebrew words. (2) The rejection of root-initial gemination supports the psychological reality of the Obligatory Contour Principle, a pivotal constraint in autosegmental phonology. (3) A sensitivity to the location of geminates presupposes a distinction between the representation of geminate and nongeminate bigrams. Such a distinction, however, requires the implementation of a symbol. Our findings converge with numerous linguistic evidence in suggesting that the representation of constituency structure is necessary to account for linguistic generalizations.     

Decomposing words into their constituent morphemes: Evidence from English and Hebrew.

Participants segmented and shifted a sequence of letters from a source word to a target word and then named the product aloud. Morphemic and nonmorphemic letter sequences (e.g., EN) from phonemically matched words such as HARDEN and GARDEN were compared. In 4 experiments, naming latencies were faster for morphemic sequences than their nonmorphemic controls in both English, in which the morphemic status of the shifted sequence was varied and sequences were appended after the base morpheme (linearly concatenated), and in Hebrew, in which morphological transparency of the root (base morpheme) was varied and 1 morpheme was infixed inside the other (nonconcatenative) so that the phonological and orthographic integrity of the morphemic constituents was disrupted. Moreover, the likelihood with which both affixes and bases combine to form words influenced segment shifting times. In conclusion, skilled readers are sensitive to the morphological components of words whether or not they form contiguous orthographic or phonological units. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition blindness between words: Nature of the orthographic and phonological representations involved.

Repetition Blindness (RB) is the failure to recall the 2nd instance of a rapidly presented word. Five experiments investigated the orthographic and phonological representations involved in RB. Exps 1 and 2 found that the RB effect between orthographic neighbors is modulated by the relative frequency of the words, but not their absolute frequency. Exp 3 showed that the reduced RB effect between neighbors as compared with identical words is due to the reduced orthographic overlap, not to a lack of morphological or semantic overlap. Exps 4 and 5 showed that the RB effect occurs between phonologically related items, and that phonological and frequency properties of the target's orthographic neighbors affect the size of the effect. It is concluded that orthographic RB and phonological RB are sensitive to the target's neighborhood organization and arise from similar mechanisms, but at different stages of processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The beginnings of orthographic knowledge: Children's knowledge of double letters in words.

Three experiments were carried out to examine the development of knowledge about double letters. Children and adults chose items they thought looked most word-like from pairs of nonwords. First graders chose nonwords with final doublets (e.g., baff) and allowable doublets (e.g., yill) as more word-like than nonwords with initial doublets (e.g., bbaf) or unallowable doublets (e.g., yihh). Children in late kindergarten chose final-doublet nonwords (e.g., pess) more often than initial-doublet nonwords (e.g., ppes), but performed at chance when choosing between items such as jull and jukk . The same children in 1st grade chose jull more often than jukk even though their own spellings were semiphonetic and phonetic according to stage theories of spelling development. Only participants in the 6th grade and above knew the correspondence between a medial doublet and a preceding short vowel (e.g., tebbif). The results suggest that even young writers know about simple orthographic patterns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological, orthographic, and lexical codes: Comment on Carello et al. (1994).

In a series of experiments, N. Sebastián-Gallés (1991) showed lexical involvement in reading in Spanish (a language that has a shallow orthography). These results were assumed to be inconsistent with the model of prelexical phonology in reading. C. Carello et al (1994) disagree; they argue that the results of Sebastián-Gallés parallel previous data found in Serbo-Croatian (which also has shallow orthography). However, the results cannot be explained within the prelexical model, nor do the Sebastián-Gallés data parallel previous ones. Finally, some general problems with current models of prelexical reading are identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological activation in visual identification of Chinese two-character words.

Evidence for phonological activation in the recognition of 2-character Chinese words was discovered in 2 experiments. In a meaning-judgment task, Experiment 1 exposed two words with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 0, 71, and 157 ms. At all 3 SOAs, times to make a "no" meaning judgment were longer for words that were homophones than for unrelated controls. In a lexical-decision task, Experiment 2 manipulated the phonological consistency of 1 of the 2 characters. Responses to words with a phonologically inconsistent character were slower, regardless of the left–right position of the character. These results add to previous results for 1-character words, suggesting that phonology is an obligatory constituent of word identification in Chinese. A proposed theoretical framework for 2-character word identification accounts for the results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic, repetition and rime priming between spoken words: behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Semantic, phonological and repetition priming for auditorily presented words were examined, using both behavioral reaction times (RTs) and electrophysiological event-related potentials (ERPs) measures. On critical trials, a word prime was followed by a word target that was semantically or phonologically related (rime) or not related (control) to the prime. Pairs of word-pseudoword items served as fillers. Participants were asked to respond to word targets in the RT experiment and to pseudowords in the ERP experiment. In each experiment stimuli were presented once and then repeated in the very same way. RTs were found to be fastest for semantic, intermediate for rime and slowest for control targets; large repetition effects occurred for all targets. ERPs results showed that both semantic and phonological priming influenced the same component, namely the N400, whose amplitude was smallest to semantic, intermediate to rime and largest to control targets; repetition effects were only found for semantic trials.     

Distance-dependent processing of pictures and words.

A series of 8 experiments investigated the association between pictorial and verbal representations and the psychological distance of the referent objects from the observer. The results showed that people better process pictures that represent proximal objects and words that represent distal objects than pictures that represent distal objects and words that represent proximal objects. These results were obtained with various psychological distance dimensions (spatial, temporal, and social), different tasks (classification and categorization), and different measures (speed of processing and selective attention). The authors argue that differences in the processing of pictures and words emanate from the physical similarity of pictures, but not words, to the referents. Consequently, perceptual analysis is commonly applied to pictures but not to words. Pictures thus impart a sense of closeness to the referent objects and are preferably used to represent such objects, whereas words do not convey proximity and are preferably used to represent distal objects in space, time, and social perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological processing skills and the Reading Recovery Program.

Sought to determine whether the Reading Recovery Program would be more effective if systematic instruction in phonological recoding skills were incorporated into the program. First-grade at-risk readers were divided into 3 matched groups of 32 children each; a modified Reading Recovery group, a standard Reading Recovery group, and a standard intervention group. The children in the modified Reading Recovery group received explicit code instruction involving phonograms. Results indicated that, although both Reading Recovery groups achieved levels of reading performance required for discontinuation of the program, the modified Reading Recovery group reached these levels of performance much more quickly. Results further indicated that the children selected for Reading Recovery were particularly deficient in phonological processing skills and that their progress in the program was strongly related to the development of these skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task-set reconfiguration and perceptual processing: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence.

Oriet and Jolic?ur (2003) proposed that an endogenous task-set reconfiguration process acts as a hard bottleneck during which even early perceptual processing is impossible. We examined this assumption using a psychophysiological approach. Participants were required to switch between magnitude and parity judgment tasks within a predictable task sequence while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Stimulus contrast and response stimulus interval (RSI) were manipulated. Behavioral data demonstrated typical task switch costs that decreased as RSI increased. However, whereas ERP analysis of visual ERP component latencies sensitively revealed the contrast effect, a switch-specific postponement of perceptual processing during task-set reconfiguration at short RSIs was not observed. The present findings indicate that the process of task-set reconfiguration does not constitute a hard bottleneck that delays perceptual processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological universals constrain the processing of nonspeech stimuli.

Domain-specific systems are hypothetically specialized with respect to the outputs they compute and the inputs they allow (Fodor, 1983). Here, we examine whether these 2 conditions for specialization are dissociable. An initial experiment suggests that English speakers could extend a putatively universal phonological restriction to inputs identified as nonspeech. A subsequent comparison of English and Russian participants indicates that the processing of nonspeech inputs is modulated by linguistic experience. Striking, qualitative differences between English and Russian participants suggest that they rely on linguistic principles, both universal and language-particular, rather than generic auditory processing strategies. Thus, the computation of idiosyncratic linguistic outputs is apparently not restricted to speech inputs. This conclusion presents various challenges to both domain-specific and domain-general accounts of cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological encoding is not contingent on semantic feature retrieval: An electrophysiological study on object naming.

In the present study, the authors examined with event-related brain potentials whether phonological encoding in picture naming is mediated by basic semantic feature retrieval or proceeds independently. In a manual 2-choice go/no-go task the choice response depended on a semantic classification (animal vs. object) and the execution decision was contingent on a classification of name phonology (vowel vs. consonant). The introduction of a semantic task mixing procedure allowed for selectively manipulating the speed of semantic feature retrieval. Serial and parallel models were tested on the basis of their differential predictions for the effect of this manipulation on the lateralized readiness potential and N200 component. The findings indicate that phonological code retrieval is not strictly contingent on prior basic semantic feature processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing print exposure and orthographic processing skill in children: A quick measure of reading experience.

In a study of 3rd- and 4th-grade children it was established that orthographic processing ability can account for variance in word recognition skill after the variance due to phonological processing has been partialed out. This independent orthographic variance was related to performance on a new measure of individual differences in exposure to print, the Title Recognition Test, that has a very brief administration time. Additionally, some of the orthographic processing variance linked to word recognition ability was not shared with either phonological processing measures or with print exposure. The results of the study were supportive of the idea that there are individual differences in word recognition ability caused by variation in orthographic processing abilities that are in part determined by print exposure differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)