Compensatory cross-modal effects of sentence context on visual word recognition in adults

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.

Automatic activation of phonology in visual word recognition has been well documented. It has been attributed, at least in part, to the sequential development of speech and literacy which results in the tendency for children to match orthographical input to phonological representation at the early stages of literacy development (e.g., Bosman & De Groot, 1996; Davis, Castles, & Iakovidis, 1998; Goswami, 1993). In contrast to the development of speech prior to literacy in first language (L1) acquisition, second language (L2) learners typically learn to speak and read at the same time. This raises the question of whether phonology is also automatically activated in L2 reading. This issue was investigated in this study by exploring the pseudohomophone effect in L2 reading using a lexical decision task. The role of learners’ L1 was also examined by including both alphabetic and non-alphabetic learners of English as L2. A strong pseudohomophone effect was found in reaction time among native English speakers and alphabetic non-native speakers. Non-alphabetic learners, however, showed a pseudohomophone effect in error rate but not in reaction time. The findings were discussed in terms of how learning experiences and L1 background affect phonological activation in visual L2 word recognition.

The neural/mental operations involved in the process of visual word recognition (VWR) are fundamental for the efficient comprehension of written/printed words during reading. The present study used CiteSpace, a visual analysis software, to identify the intellectual landscape where VWR has been reviewed in the past decade. Thus, synthesized co-citation networks were analyzed to explore and discuss the main questions raised in the VWR literature: the research fronts and the emerging trends of research on this topic. Our results showed that the main questions addressed in VWR studies during the last decade have been focused on four main aspects related to "what," "where," "when," and "how" of VWR; to be specific, the different types of representations assessed during VWR ("what"), the locations and the timing of the brain activity involved in VWR ("where" and "when"), and the interactivity among different representations during processing ("how"). Among the revised studies, letter position coding was found to be the main topic of interest, possibly reflecting the critical role of this process. Furthermore, the evidence found in these studies consistently supported that VWR implies access to phonological, semantic, and morphological representations, which interact and modulate the processing of written words, particularly during early stages. Altogether, our findings showed the evolution in VWR literature regarding the different cognitive and neural operations involved in this process, highlighting the growing interest over the last decade toward the top-down way that mental representations interact.

The visual environment changes at multiple timescales. It has been recently demonstrated that visual adaptation is composed of multiple mechanisms operating at differing timescales to accommodate the environmental changes. However, whether multiple adaptation mechanisms correspond to different stages of visual processing remains unclear. To address this issue, in the current study, we compared the timescales of adaptation between the stages of early and mid-level visual processing by tracking the decay of the curvature aftereffect after adaptation to either a compound stimulus or a component stimulus. The results revealed a slower decay for the compound adaptation condition than for the component adaptation condition. Our finding indicates that neural mechanisms for visual adaptation are more sluggish at the mid level than those at the early stage of visual processing.

Aging, alzheimer's disease, and word recognition: A review of the recent literature

The present study investigated the representation and processing of segmental and tonal information in visual Chinese word recognition in native and non‐native Chinese readers. Two experiments using homophone judgement paradigm were conducted. When judging two Chinese characters (Experiment 1), both groups showed difficulties when the segmental but not tonal information was shared (i.e., S+T− condition), with stronger interference for non‐native readers. When judging a Pinyin and a Chinese character (Experiment 2), non‐native readers' S+T− disadvantage was significantly reduced. Finally, when their L1s share the Latin alphabets with Pinyin, the participants showed stronger segmental reliance compared with the native readers. These findings suggest that while both native and non‐native readers rely more on segmental information in Chinese visual word recognition, this reliance is stronger among non‐native readers. Furthermore, the alphabetic nature of the Pinyin orthography may help non‐native readers' phonological representation and processing in a nonalphabetic writing system.

The reading comprehension and visual word recognition in 50 deaf children and adolescents with at least 3 years of cochlear implant (CI) use were evaluated. Their skills were contrasted with reference data of 500 deaf children without CIs. The reading comprehension level in children with CIs was expected to surpass that in deaf children without implants, partly via improved visual word recognition. Reading comprehension scores of children with implants were significantly better than those of deaf children without implants, although the performance in implant users was substantially lagging behind that in hearing children. Visual word recognition was better in children with CIs than in children without implants, in secondary education only. No difference in visual word recognition was found between the children with CIs and the hearing children, whereas the deaf children without implants showed a slightly poorer performance. The difference in reading comprehension performance of the deaf children with and without CIs remained present when visual word recognition was controlled for. This indicates that other reading-related skills were also contributing to the improved reading comprehension skills of deaf children with CIs.

A single-case study is presented of a patient w ith a modality-specific problem in visual object recognition, w hich can be linked to impaired stored descriptions for objects. Performance was poor on tasks requiring naming, semantic decisions, and object decisions to seen objects. Performance on semantic decisions w ith w ords, however, was relatively good, demonstrating that the problem was not due solely to a general semantic impairment. Moreover, in contrast to the impairments in visual object recognition, both face recognition and on-line visual word recognition w ere within normal limits. The data indicate that im pairments of object recognition can be distinguished from impairments of face and visual w ord recognition, even when the problem can be localised within the structural description system for objects. We discuss the im plications of the results for understanding the relations between object, face, and word identification.

Although interactivity is considered a fundamental principle of cognitive (and computational) models of reading, it has received far less attention in neural models of reading that instead focus on serial stages of feed-forward processing from visual input to orthographic processing to accessing the corresponding phonological and semantic information. In particular, the left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex is proposed to be the first stage where visual word recognition occurs prior to accessing nonvisual information such as semantics and phonology. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether there is evidence that activation in vOT is influenced top-down by the interaction of visual and nonvisual properties of the stimuli during visual word recognition tasks. Participants performed two different types of lexical decision tasks that focused on either visual or nonvisual properties of the word or word-like stimuli. The design allowed us to investigate how vOT activation during visual word recognition was influenced by a task change to the same stimuli and by a stimulus change during the same task. We found both stimulus- and task-driven modulation of vOT activation that can only be explained by top-down processing of nonvisual aspects of the task and stimuli. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that vOT acts as an interface linking visual form with nonvisual processing in both bottom up and top down directions. Such interactive processing at the neural level is in agreement with cognitive and computational models of reading but challenges some of the assumptions made by current neuro-anatomical models of reading.

IntroductionThe current study investigated the influence of the number of meanings on visual word recognition, with a particular focus on hemispheric dynamics.MethodsBy reanalyzing parafoveal Korean lexical decision data, we examined how words with a high versus low number of meanings affect right visual field advantage (RVFA) and bilateral redundancy gain (BRG).ResultsThe words with a greater number of meanings exhibited a stronger RVFA and reduced BRG compared to words with fewer meanings.DiscussionThe findings suggest that the facilitatory effects associated with multiple meanings are more pronounced in the left hemisphere (LH) than in the right hemisphere (RH). Furthermore, the increased lateralization of processing within the LH appears to diminish the need for interhemispheric interactions, leading to decreased coordination between the hemispheres. These results imply that the number of meanings in words shapes interhemispheric dynamics during visual word recognition. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to theoretical models of visual word recognition and hemispheric differences in language processing.

We investigated whether semantic interference occurring during visual word recognition is resolved using domain-general control mechanisms or using more specific mechanisms related to semantic processing. We asked participants to perform a lexical decision task with taboo stimuli, which induce semantic interference, as well as a semantic Stroop task and a Simon task, intended as benchmarks of linguistic-semantic and non-linguistic interference, respectively. Using a correlational approach, we investigated potential similarities between effects produced in the three tasks, both at the level of overall means and as a function of response speed (delta-plot analysis). Correlations selectively surfaced between the lexical decision and the semantic Stroop task. These findings suggest that, during visual word recognition, semantic interference is controlled by semantic-specific mechanisms, which intervene to face prepotent but task-irrelevant semantic information interfering with the accomplishment of the task's goal.

In the present study, the role of phonological information in visual word recognition is investigated by adopting a large-scale data-driven approach that exploits a new consistency measure based on distributional semantics methods. A recent study by Marelli, Amenta, and Crepaldi (2015) showed that the consistency between an orthographic string and the meanings to which it is associated in a large corpus is a relevant predictor in lexical decision experiments. Exploiting irregular mappings between orthography and phonology in English, we were able to compute a phonology-to-semantics consistency measure that dissociates from its orthographic counterpart and tested both measures on lexical decision data taken from the British Lexicon Project (Keuleers et al., 2012). Results showed that both orthography and phonology are activated during visual word recognition. However, their contribution is crucially determined by the extent to which they are informative of the word semantics, and phonology plays a crucial role in accessing word meaning.

Lexical Access, Cognitive Psychology of

This study examined how lexical properties, such as word frequency, word length, and morphological features, affect the word recognition of Korean Hangul among adult readers. Ninety-four native Korean students performed a lexical decision task on disyllabic and trisyllabic words and nonwords. Results of cross-classified and hierarchical linear modeling showed a significant frequency effect but null effects of word length and their interactions on word recognition. The null syllable effect might be contributable to the block structure of syllables, which does not require syllabic decomposition in recognition. Given that Chinese-derived Sino-Korean words account for about 70% of the Korean lexicon, morphological features embedded in the word were examined in order to further understand the morphological undercurrent of multisyllabic word recognition. Word type (bound-morphemic words vs. compound words), word origin (native or semi-native words vs. Chinese-derived words), and morphemic transparency (opaque morpheme vs. transparent morpheme) were significant predictors of the speed of visual word recognition. An analysis of frequency split showed that compound words and morpheme transparency facilitated word recognition for high frequency words, while the number of morphemes within the word, Korean native and semi-native words, and morphemic transparency facilitated word recognition for low frequency words. These results suggest that high and low frequency words function differently according to morphological information available within the multisyllabic word in visual word recognition in Hangul.

Preface. How to Use this Book. Section A. Introduction. 1. The Study of Language. Introduction. Why Study Language and Why Is It So Difficult? What is Language? How Has Language Changed Over Time? What is Language For? The History and Methods of Psycholinguistics. Models in Psycholinguistics. Language and the Brain. Themes and Controversies. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 2. Describing Language. Introduction. How to Describe Speech Sounds. Consonants. Vowels. Syllables. Linguistic Approaches to Syntax. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. Section B. The Biological and Developmental Bases of Language. 3. The Foundations of Language. Introduction. Where Did Language Come From? Do Animals Have Language? The Biological Basis of Language. Is There a Critical Period for Language Development? The Cognitive Basis of Language. The Social Basis of Language. What is the Relation Between Language and Thought? Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 4. Language Development. Introduction. What Drives Language Development. The Language Acquisition Device. Phonological Development. Syntactic Development. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 5. Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition. Introduction. Bilingualism. Second Language Acquisition. Evaluation of Work on Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further reading. Section C. Word Recognition. 6. Recognizing Visual Words. Introduction. Basic Methods and Findings. What Makes Word Recognition Easier (or Harder)? Attentional Processes in Visual Word Recognition. Do Different Tasks Give Consistent Results? Is There a Dedicated Visual Word Recognition System? Meaning-based Facilitation of Visual Word Recognition. Processing Morphologically Complex Words. Models of Visual Word Recognition. Coping with Lexical Ambiguity. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 7. Reading. Introduction. The Writing System. A Preliminary Model of Reading. The Processes of Normal Reading. The Neuroscience of Adult Reading Disorders. Models of Word Naming. Connectionism Models of Dyslexia. Comparison of Models. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 8. Learning to Read and Spell. Introduction. Normal Reading Development. Phonological Awareness. How Should Reading be Taught? Learning to Spell. Developmental Dyslexia. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 9. Understanding Speech. Introduction. Recognizing Speech. Models of Speech Recognition. The Neuroscience of Spoken Word Recognition. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. F urther Reading. Section D. Meaning and Using Language. 10. Understanding the Structure of Sentences. Introduction. Dealing with Structural Ambiguity. Early work on Parsing. Processing Structural Ambiguity. Gaps, Traces, and Unbounded Dependencies. The Neuroscience of Parsing. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 11. Word Meaning. Introduction. Classic Approaches to Semantics. Semantic Networks. Semantic Features. Family Resemblance Models. Combining Concepts. Figurative Language. The Neuroscience of Semantics. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 12. Comprehension. Introduction. Memory for Text and Inferences. Inferences. References and Ambiguity. Models of Text Processing. Individual Differences in Comprehension Skills. The Neuroscience of Text and Discourse Processing. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. Section E. Production and Other Aspects of Language. 13. Language Production. Introduction. Slips of the Tongue. Syntactic Planning. Lexicalization. Phonological Encoding. The Analysis of Hesitations. The Neuroscience of Speech Production. Writing and Agraphia. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 14. How Do We Use Language? Introduction. Making Inferences in Conversation. The Structure of Conversation. Collaboration in Dialog. Sound and Vision. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 15. The Structure of the Language System. Introduction. What are the Modules of Language? How Many Lexicons are There? Language and Short-term Memory. Summary. Some Questions to Think About. Further Reading. 16. New Directions. Introduction. Themes in Psycholinguistics Revisited. Some Growth Areas? Conclusion. Appendix: Connectionism. Interactive Activation Models. Back-propagation. Further Reading. Glossary. Example of Sentence Analysis. References. Author Index. Subject Index.