The role of spatial attention in visual word processing.

Ss made lexical decisions on a target letter string presented above or below fixation. In Exps 1 and 2, target location was cued 100 msec in advance of target onset. Responses were faster on validly than on invalidly cued trials. In Exp 3, the target was sometimes accompanied by irrelevant stimuli on the other side of fixation; in such cases, responses were slowed (a spatial filtering effect). Both cuing and filtering effects on response time were additive with effects of word frequency and lexical status (words vs nonwords). These findings are difficult to reconcile with claims that spatial attention is less involved in processing familiar words than in unfamiliar words and nonwords. The results can be reconciled with a late-selection locus of spatial attention only with difficulty but are easily explained by early selection models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual attention and word recognition in Stroop color naming: Is word recognition "automatic?"

In Stroop color naming, color targets were accompanied by a color word or a color word plus a neutral word that reduces or "dilutes" the Stroop effect. Abrupt-onset cues called the focus of attention to one stimulus or another. Cuing influenced the size of the Stroop effect but never eliminated it. Unlike the Stroop effect itself, Stroop dilution from the neutral word could be eliminated, by cuing the color word. Focusing visual attention on the color word protected it from Stroop dilution; focusing visual attention on the neutral word did not prevent Stroop interference. Thus, spatial attention is a modulator, protecting visual data from crosstalk, but a word need not be the focus of visual attention to be recognized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition without central attention: Evidence for greater automaticity with advancing age.

The present experiments examined the automaticity of word recognition. The authors examined whether people can recognize words while central attention is devoted to another task and how this ability changes across the life span. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision Task 2 was combined with either an auditory or a visual Task 1. Regardless of the Task 1 modality, Task 2 word recognition proceeded in parallel with Task 1 central operations for older adults but not for younger adults. This is a rare example of improved cognitive processing with advancing age. When Task 2 was nonlexical (Experiment 2), however, there was no evidence for greater parallel processing for older adults. Thus, the processing advantage appears to be restricted to lexical processes. The authors conclude that greater cumulative experience with lexical processing leads to greater automaticity, allowing older adults to more efficiently perform this stage in parallel with another task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition: A multistage activation model.

Although many models of word recognition have postulated loci for the simple effects of Context, Stimulus Quality, and Word Frequency, most of them are problematic in that they do not account for the pattern of joint effects among these factors. The experiments reported here show that, among other things, Word Frequency interacts with Context but is additive with Stimulus Quality in the context of a lexical decision experiment that also produces an interaction between Stimulus Quality and Context. The pattern of joint effects among these factors is accommodated by a multistage activation model that is based on the framework proposed by D. Besner and M. C. Smith (1992). (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)     

Visual word recognition: A dissociation of lexical and semantic processing.

These experiments illustrate 2 new dissociations in word-recognition tasks. In one, relatedness facilitated lexical decision but impaired searching for a common letter in the same pairs of words (a cross-over interaction between relatedness and task). In the other dissociation, lexicality facilitated performance (words processed faster than nonwords) while relatedness impaired performance (related words processed slower than unrelated words) in the letter search task. Two classes of explanation are discussed. In the first, the perception of relatedness serves to focus attention to the word level, thereby making explicit letter level processing more difficult and/or increasing the number of competing lexical entries via priming. In the second, spreading inhibition makes related words more difficult to process than unrelated words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition in bilinguals: Evidence from masked phonological priming.

Bilingual written language representation was investigated with the masked phonological priming paradigm. Pseudohomophonic and control primes of French target words were used to show that Dutch–French bilinguals exhibit the same pattern of phonological and orthographic priming as native French speakers, which suggests that the same processes underlie first- and second-language processing. It was also found that for bilinguals, but not monolinguals, it is possible to prime a target word of the second language with a homophonic stimulus (either word or nonword) of the first language. This interlingual phonological priming effect was of the same size as the intralingual priming effect. Implications for theories of bilingual written language representation and for the interpretation of the masked phonological priming paradigm are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The contribution of attention to the right visual field advantage for word recognition

Perceptual asymmetries have been explained by structural, attentional bias and attentional advantage models. Structural models focus on asymmetries in the physical access information has to the hemispheres, whereas attentional models focus on asymmetries in the operation of attentional processes. A series of experiments was conducted to assess the contribution of attentional mechanisms to the right visual field (RVF) advantage found for word recognition. Valid, invalid and neutral peripheral cues were presented at a variety of stimulus onset asynchronies to manipulate spatial attention. Results indicated a significant RVF advantage and cueing effect. The effect of the cue was stronger for the left visual field than the RVF. This interaction supports the attentional advantage model which suggests that the left hemisphere requires less attention to process words. The attentional asymmetry is interpreted in terms of the different word processing styles used by the left and right hemispheres. These results have ramifications for the methodology used in divided visual field research and the interpretation of this research.     

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)     

Visual word recognition: Evidence for global and local control over semantic feedback.

Two lexical decision experiments examined the joint effects of stimulus quality, semantic context, and cue-target associative strength when all factors were intermixed in a block of trials. Both experiments found a three-way interaction. Semantic context and stimulus quality interacted when associative strength between cue-target pairs was strong, and the interaction was eliminated when the strength was weak. These results support a role for a local mechanism that relies on trial specific information, in addition to a mechanism that makes use of global information available across a block of trials. The absence of an interaction between the joint effects of semantic context and stimulus quality is attributed to blocking the feedback from the semantic system to the orthographic system, functionally separating the orthographic and semantic modules. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity and its role in models of word recognition.

Reviews research concerned with processing words that have more than one meaning. Three principal models of ambiguity processing are outlined—context-dependent, ordered-access, and exhaustive access—and the research on which they are based is discussed. Findings seem best served by a hybrid model that allows for activation to accrue for all meanings, with the degree of activation sensitive to the frequency of the meanings and context. The major results of this field are interpreted in terms of the literature in word recognition. Such interpretation is important because of the guidance that such models may give to ambiguity research and because of the importance that ambiguous words hold for more general models of lexical access. (77 ref) (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)     

Visual word recognition: Effort after meaning but not (necessarily) meaning after effort.

A robust semantic priming effect typically occurs in visual word recognition if the prime is read prior to a response to the target. M. C. Smith, D. Besner, and H. Miyoshi (1994) reported that this semantic priming effect is markedly reduced for short-duration primes randomly intermixed with longer duration primes, and they offered a signal-detection account of their results. This general finding is replicated and extended in 3 experiments, which demonstrate the importance of list context for this prime duration effect and suggest that a center-surround attentional mechanism provides a better account of the results to date. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual marking: Selective attention to asynchronous temporal groups.

In visual search, when a subset of distractors is previewed 1 s before the target and the remaining distractors, search speed is independent of the number of previewed items. This is visual marking. What allows old items to be marked? Four experiments show that marking is disrupted if the onset of the new items is accompanied by synchronous changes to the old items, but it is not disrupted by changes restricted to the background or by asynchronous changes to the old items. Further, behaviorally relevant old items can be prioritized over new items. Visual marking is based on temporal asynchrony between new and old items, which allows segregation of these items into 2 temporal groups. Attention is then selectively applied to 1 group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Auditory word recognition: Extrinsic and intrinsic effects of word frequency.

Two experiments investigated the influence of word frequency in a phoneme identification task. Speech voicing continua were constructed so that one endpoint was a high-frequency word and the other endpoint was a low-frequency word (e.g., best–pest). Exp 1 demonstrated that ambiguous tokens were labeled such that a high-frequency word was formed (intrinsic frequency effect). Exp 2 manipulated the frequency composition of the list (extrinsic frequency effect). A high-frequency list bias produced an exaggerated influence of frequency; a low-frequency list bias showed a reverse frequency effect. Reaction time (RT) effects were discussed in terms of activation and postaccess decision models of frequency coding. Results support a late use of frequency in auditory word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the locus of the word frequency effect in visual word recognition.

Examined the effect of word frequency and stimulus quality factor effects on response time (RT) performance in multi-factor lexical decision (word recognition) experiments using a sample of 54 university students. Results show that additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency are observed in mean RTs, variances, and the ex-Gaussian parameters of the RT distribution. These findings are consistent with the conclusion that word frequency and stimulus quality affect separate stages of processing. This is consistent with the conclusion that word frequency effects reflect mapping operations between stages, but, when taken in conjunction with other reports in the literature, is inconsistent with the received view in many activation models that word frequency exerts its effect within the word detector level of representation. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the nonautomaticity of visual word processing: Electrophysiological evidence that word processing requires central attention.

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine the degree to which people can process words while devoting central attention to another task. Experiments 1-4 measured the N400 effect, which is sensitive to the degree of mismatch between a word and the current semantic context. Experiment 5 measured the P3 difference between low- and high-frequency words. Because these effects can occur only if a word has been identified, both ERP components index word processing. The authors found that the N400 effect (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) and the P3 difference (Experiment 5) were strongly attenuated for Task 2 words presented nearly simultaneously with Task 1. No such attenuation was found when the Task 1 stimulus was presented but required no response (Experiment 2). Strong attenuation was also evident when the Task 2 word was presented before the Task 1 stimulus (Experiment 4), suggesting that central resources are not allocated to stimuli first-come, first-served but rather are strategically locked to Task 1. The authors conclude that visual word processing is not fully automatic but rather requires access to limited central attentional resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dichotic shadowing and selective attention to word meanings in schizophrenia.

The dichotic shadowing technique was employed with 24 newly admitted schizophrenics, 24 neurotic inpatients, and 24 healthy controls to locate sources of schizophrenic attentional deficit. The shadowed stimulus words in the relevant channel were always neutral, whereas the stimulus words in the irrelevant channel varied in each condition. The 4 conditions were (a) no distraction, (b) neutral words, (c) semantically similar words, and (d) affective words. All Ss performed better in the no-distraction condition compared to behavior in the other conditions, and better in the neutral vs the affective condition. Results indicate that decline in shadowing performance under distraction with affective word meaning is not a specific schizophrenic deficit. At the level of information processing studied, evidence was not found for attentional dysfunction in schizophrenia. Speculation on the sources of this discrepancy with other studies is presented, considering S groups tested and experimental control of attention switching. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional demands of visual word recognition.

Becker's (1976, 1979, 1980, 1985; Becker & Killion, 1977; Eisenberg & Becker, 1982) verification model was used as a framework to investigate the attentional demands of word recognition. In two experiments, a lexical decision task and an auditory probe task were performed in single- and dual-task conditions. Responses to probes were divided into detection and movement measures that indexed the demands of recognition and response output, respectively. In Experiment 1, single- to dual-task decrements in probe detection performance were larger during low-frequency as compared with high-frequency trials. This finding indicates that the attentional demands of word recognition vary with word frequency. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2, which was designed to separate a response compatibility and a capacity interpretation of the results. The findings are interpreted within Becker's verification model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Practice effects on the unit of word recognition.

Component processing in a word recognition task should be indicated by longer latencies with increased word length. This should not be observed if holistic processing is used. In the present study, mirror-image animal and nonanimal words of 3–6 letters were presented to 30 undergraduates in a reaction time categorization task. A significant interaction of Word Length by Block was found for words presented over all 4 blocks, and no interaction was found for words seen in only 1 block. A shift from component to holistic processing was found for the repeated words. The decrease in slope associated with word length suggested that with repeated exposure to a word, there is an increase in the size of the processing unit used in word recognition. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)