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)     

Consequences of lexical stress on learning an artificial lexicon.

Four experiments examined effects of lexical stress on lexical access for recently learned words. Participants learned artificial lexicons (48 words) containing phonologically similar items and were tested on their knowledge in a 4-alternative forced-choice (4AFC) referent-selection task. Lexical stress differences did not reduce confusions between cohort items: KAdazu and kaDAzeI were confused with one another in a 4AFC task and in gaze fixations as often as BOsapeI and BOsapaI. However, lexical stress did affect the relative likelihood of stress-initial confusions when words were embedded in running nonsense speech. Words with medial stress, regardless of initial vowel quality, were more prone to confusions than words with initial stress. The authors concluded that noninitial stress, particularly when word segmentation is difficult, may serve as "noise" that alters lexical learning and lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical stress effect and its interaction with frequency in word pronunciation.

Stress assignment in reading words aloud is investigated. Three-syllable Italian words with regular or irregular stress and high or low frequencies were presented in a naming task and in a lexical decision task. With low-frequency words, naming times for regular stressed words were faster than for words with irregular stress, whereas no difference was found for high-frequency words. Instead, in the lexical decision task the interaction between stress and frequency was significant for errors but not for reaction times (RTs). Exps 4 and 5 investigated the effect of neighborhood in pronouncing words and nonwords. In Exp 6, words were presented in a delayed naming task to investigate the effects of stress and frequency on the implementation of the motor program for production. The results suggest that the production phase of the naming process might be to some extent involved in the assignment of stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cognate facilitation effect: Implications for models of lexical access.

Do nonselected lexical nodes activate their phonological information? Catalan-Spanish bilinguals were asked to name (a) pictures whose names are cognates, in the 2 languages (words that are phonologically similar in the 2 languages) and (b) pictures whose names are noncognates in the 2 languages. If nonselected lexical nodes are phonologically encoded, naming latencies should be shorter for cognate words, and because the cognate status of words is only meaningful for bilingual speakers, this difference should disappear when testing monolingual speakers. The results of Experiment 1 fully supported these predictions. In Experiment 2, the difference between cognate and noncognate words was larger when naming in the nondominant language than when naming in the dominant language. The results of the 2 experiments are interpreted as providing support to cascaded activation models of lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word length and lexical activation: Longer is better.

Many models of spoken word recognition posit the existence of lexical and sublexical representations, with excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms used to affect the activation levels of such representations. Bottom-up evidence provides excitatory input, and inhibition from phonetically similar representations leads to lexical competition. In such a system, long words should produce stronger lexical activation than short words, for 2 reasons: Long words provide more bottom-up evidence than short words, and short words are subject to greater inhibition due to the existence of more similar words. Four experiments provide evidence for this view. In addition, reaction-time-based partitioning of the data shows that long words generate greater activation that is available both earlier and for a longer time than is the case for short words. As a result, lexical influences on phoneme identification are extremely robust for long words but are quite fragile and condition-dependent for short words. Models of word recognition must consider words of all lengths to capture the true dynamics of lexical activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical selection is not by competition: A reinterpretation of semantic interference and facilitation effects in the picture-word interference paradigm.

The dominant view in the field of lexical access in speech production maintains that selection of a word becomes more difficult as the levels of activation of nontarget words increase-selection by competition. The authors tested this prediction in two sets of experiments. First, the authors show that participants are faster to name pictures of objects (e.g., "bed") in the context of semantically related verb distractors (e.g., sleep) compared with unrelated verb distractors (e.g., shoot). In the second set of experiments, the authors show that target naming latencies (e.g., "horse") are, if anything, faster for within-category semantically close distractor words (e.g., zebra) than for within-category semantically far distractor words (e.g., whale). In the context of previous research, these data ground a new empirical generalization: As distractor words become semantically closer to the target concepts-all else being equal-target naming is facilitated. This fact means that lexical selection does not involve competition, and consequently, that the semantic interference effect does not reflect a lexical level process. This conclusion has important implications for models of lexical access and interpretations of Stroop-like interference effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical and prelexical influences on word segmentation: Evidence from priming.

The authors examined the interaction of acoustic and lexical information in lexical access and segmentation. The cross-modal lexical priming technique was used to determine which word meanings listeners access at the offsets of oronyms (e.g., tulips or two lips) presented in connected speech. In Experiment 1, participants showed priming by the meaning of tulips when presented with two lips. In Experiment 2, priming by the meaning of the 2nd word was found in such sequences (e.g., lips in two lips). Finally, Experiment 3 demonstrated that listeners do not show priming by lips when it is pronounced as part of tulips. The results of these experiments show that listeners sometimes access words other than those intended by speakers and may simultaneously access words associated with several parses of ambiguous sequences. Furthermore, the results suggest that acoustic marking of word onsets places constraints on the success of lexical access. To account for these results, the authors propose a new model of lexical access and segmentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical characteristics of words used in emotional Stroop experiments.

Validity of the emotional Stroop task hinges on equivalence between the emotion and the control words in terms of lexical features related to word recognition. The authors evaluated the lexical features of 1,033 words used in 32 published emotional Stroop studies. Emotion words were significantly lower in frequency of use, longer in length, and had smaller orthographic neighborhoods than words used as controls. These lexical features contribute to slower word recognition and hence are likely to contribute to delayed latencies in color naming. The often-replicated slowdown in color naming of emotion words may be due, in part, to lexical differences between the emotion and control words used in the majority of such studies to date. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vowel Duration Affects Visual Word Identification: Evidence That the Mediating Phonology Is Phonetically Informed.

What form is the lexical phonology that gives rise to phonological effects in visual lexical decision? The authors explored the hypothesis that beyond phonological contrasts the physical phonetic details of words are included. Three experiments using lexical decision and 1 using naming compared processing times for printed words (e.g., plead and pleat) that differ, when spoken, in vowel length and overall duration. Latencies were longer for long-vowel words than for short-vowel words in lexical decision but not in naming. Further, lexical decision on long-vowel words benefited more from identity priming than lexical decision on short-vowel words, suggesting that representations of long-vowel words achieve activation thresholds more slowly. The discussion focused on phonetically informed phonologies, particularly gestural phonology and its potential for understanding reading acquisition and performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extended total aortic arch replacement involving the proximal descending aorta through a median sternotomy

In two experiments, we investigated the interpretation and boundary conditions of the tongue-twister (TT) effect in silent reading. Previously, McCutchen, Bell, France, and Perfetti (1991) observed a TT effect when students made semantic acceptability judgments on sentences, but not when they made lexical decisions on lists of words. Using similar methodology in Experiment 1, along with two changes (using "better" TTs and longer word lists), we observed a TT effect in a lexical decision task. In Experiment 2, a memory span task revealed that students recalled fewer words from TT lists than from control lists. These results suggest that the basic mechanism of the TT effect may be articulatory, rather than working-memory, interference that occurs during lexical access and resurfaces post-lexically, inhibiting efforts to maintain the temporal order of several words.     

On the relation between feeling of knowing and lexical decision: Persistent subthreshold activation or topic familiarity?

Exp 1 replicated I. Yaniv and D. E. Meyer's (1987) finding that lexical decision and episodic recognition performance was better for words previously yielding high-accessibility levels (a combination of feeling-of-knowing and tip-of-the-tongue ratings) in comparison with those yielding low-accessibility levels in a rare word definition task. Exp 2 yielded the same pattern even though lexical decisions preceded accessibility estimates by a full week. Exp 3 dismissed the possibility that the Exp 2 results may have been due to a long-term influence from the lexical decision task to the rare word judgment task. These results support a model in which Ss (1) retrieve topic familiarity information in making accessibility estimates in the rare word definition task and (2) use this information to modulate lexical decision performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical access for concrete and abstract words.

Three experiments with 48 undergraduates compared the speed and accuracy of lexical decisions for concrete and abstract nouns. Results of Exp I, in which separate groups of Ss judged each word type, and of Exp II, in which all Ss judged mixed blocks of both word types, indicate that there was a small speed advantage for concrete nouns in lexical decision. To observe transfer effects from one word type to the other, all Ss in Exp III made judgments within blocked presentations of each word type. Findings show that when blocks of abstract words followed blocks of concrete words, judgments for the abstract words were significantly longer than those for concrete words. When concrete blocks followed abstract blocks, however, there was no difference in response time for the 2 word types. It is concluded that the effect of concreteness in lexical decision appears to be critically sensitive to order of presentation. Implications for models of common vs dual representation in lexical memory are discussed. (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Representation of Homophones: Evidence From the Distractor-Frequency Effect.

Current models of word production offer different accounts of the representation of homophones in the lexicon. The investigation of how the homophone status of a word affects lexical access can be used to test theories of lexical processing. In this study, homophones appeared as word distractors superimposed on pictures that participants named orally. The authors varied distractor frequency, a variable that has been shown to modulate the interference that distractors produce on picture naming. The results of 3 experiments converged in showing that words interfered in proportion to their individual frequency in the language, even if they have high-frequency homophone mates. This effect of specific-word frequency is compatible with models that assume (a) distinct lexical representations for the individual homophones and (b) that access to such representations is modulated by frequency. The authors discuss the extent to which current models of word production satisfy these constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The mental lexicon is fully specified: Evidence from eye-tracking.

Four visual-world experiments, in which listeners heard spoken words and saw printed words, compared an optimal-perception account with the theory of phonological underspecification. This theory argues that default phonological features are not specified in the mental lexicon, leading to asymmetric lexical matching: Mismatching input (pin) activates lexical entries with underspecified coronal stops (tin), but lexical entries with specified labial stops (pin) are not activated by mismatching input (tin). The eye-tracking data failed to show such a pattern. Although words that were phonologically similar to the spoken target attracted more looks than did unrelated distractors, this effect was symmetric in Experiment 1 with minimal pairs (tin–pin) and in Experiments 2 and 3 with words with an onset overlap (peacock–teacake). Experiment 4 revealed that /t/-initial words were looked at more frequently if the spoken input mismatched only in terms of place than if it mismatched in place and voice, contrary to the assumption that /t/ is unspecified for place and voice. These results show that speech perception uses signal-driven information to the fullest, as was predicted by an optimal perception account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguishing common and task-specific processes in word identification: A matter of some moment?

The same 500 words were presented in 6 different word identification tasks (Experiment 1: lexical decision, semantic categorization, and 3 speeded naming tasks; Experiment 2: delayed naming). Reaction time (RT distributions were estimated for each task and analyses tested for the effects of word frequency and animacy on various parameters of the RT distribution. Low frequency words yielded more skewed distributions than high frequency words in all tasks except delayed naming. The differential skew was most marked for tasks that required lexical discrimination. The semantic categorization task yielded highly skewed distributions for all words, but the word frequency effect was due to shifts in the location of the RT distributions rather than changes in skew. The results are used to evaluate the relative contributions of a common lexical access process and task-specific processes to performance in lexical discrimination and naming tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrete serial versus cascaded processing in lexical access in speech production: Further evidence from the coactivation of near-synonyms.

In 5 cross-modal picture–word interference experiments, the authors investigated the time course of lexicalization in speech production. Participants named pictures of simple objects while hearing distractor words at different stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). Distractors were semantically related or phonologically related to either the picture name or its nontarget near-synonym. Compared with an unrelated control, effects from all distractors were obtained at a late SOA (150 ms) and vanished shortly thereafter (at SOA?=?300 ms). These findings conflict with the notion of an early selection of a single element. Rather, multiple lexical representations appear to remain active until late in the production process if a near synonymous lexical competitor is present. The authors discuss the scope of these observations and their relevance for discrete 2-stage and cascaded models of lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological typicality influences sentence processing in predictive contexts: Reply to Staub, Grant, Clifton, and Rayner (2009).

In 2 separate self-paced reading experiments, Farmer, Christiansen, and Monaghan (2006) found that the degree to which a word's phonology is typical of other words in its lexical category influences online processing of nouns and verbs in predictive contexts. Staub, Grant, Clifton, and Rayner (2009) failed to find an effect of phonological typicality when they combined stimuli from the separate experiments into a single experiment. We replicated Staub et al.'s experiment and found that the combination of stimulus sets affects the predictiveness of the syntactic context; this reduces the phonological typicality effect as the experiment proceeds, although the phonological typicality effect was still evident early in the experiment. Although an ambiguous context may diminish sensitivity to the probabilistic relationship between the sound of a word and its lexical category, phonological typicality does influence online sentence processing during normal reading when the syntactic context is predictive of the lexical category of upcoming words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)