Lexical Access, Cognitive Psychology of

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.

Introduction Preview The utterances that we produce and understand may be either single-word or multi-word in their structure. In this chapter we shall consider the sorts of processes that may be involved in accessing our mental lexicon, in both single- and multi-word utterance types, and both in speech and writing as well as in production and comprehension. In the first section, we consider what sorts of language forms may be stored as entries in our mental lexicon (5.1.2), and consider some general issues in lexical access (5.1.3). We then outline the form that lexical entries may take (5.2.1–5.2.2) and review some of the major experimental findings on lexical access (5.2.3). Sections 5.3 to 5.5 review some representative models of lexical access, highlighting the salient differences between serial and parallel types of processing. One of the longeststanding issues in the field of visual word recognition concerns the role of individual letter perception vs holistic word form perception in word recognition; in this context, we consider the status of units that are both larger than individual letters and smaller than words (5.6.1). Apart from the units of perception and production, we need to consider the role of context in lexical access (5.6.2). We also review the evidence on the status of stems vs affixes in lexical access (5.6.3). Finally, we draw some conclusions (5.7). Word units First, then, we return briefly to our three participants' discussion of football (the passage discussed in ch. 3, from Crystal and Davy 1975), and we pick up the beginning of B's monologue-ish section.

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

ABSTRACTRecent research has suggested an important role for spatial attention in reading, however the nature of this influence is unclear. Further, it has been shown that intention to engage in linguistic processing can enhance lexical processing. Therefore, we developed a novel paradigm to examine the impact of spatial attention on primed and unprimed lexical processing. In a lexical decision task, targets were preceded by a cue to lexical access and spatial location simultaneously. Results indicated that on spatially valid trials, the lexical cuing effect was large and word processing was enhanced, suggesting that spatial attention influences lexical access. On spatially invalid trials, lexical cuing effects were significantly decreased, resulting in a spatial cuing by lexical cuing interaction. Results from this experiment provide evidence that spatial attention interacts with lexical access during word processing. This novel paradigm provides a new avenue for exploring the relations between spatial attention and reading processes.

Online sentence comprehension involves multiple types of cognitive processes: lexical processes such as lexical access, which call on the user's knowledge of the meaning of words in the language, and structural processes such as the integration of incoming words into an emerging representation. In this article, we investigate the temporal dynamics of lexical access and syntactic integration. Unlike much previous work that has relied on temporary ambiguity to investigate this question, we manipulate the frequency of the verb in unambiguous structures involving a well-studied syntactic complexity manipulation (subject- vs. object-extracted clefts). The results demonstrate that for high-frequency verbs, the difficulty of reading a more structurally complex object-extracted cleft structure relative to a less structurally complex subject-extracted cleft structure is largely experienced in the cleft region, whereas for low-frequency verbs this difficulty is largely experienced in the postcleft region. We interpret these results as evidence that some stages of structural processing follow lexical processing. Furthermore, we find evidence that structural processing may be delayed if lexical processing is costly, and that the delay is proportional to the difficulty of the lexical process. Implications of these results for contemporary accounts of sentence comprehension are discussed.

Lexical access takes place when sensory information is matched to lexical information. The nature of the code in which this match takes place was examined in two experiments. The first experiment looked at auditory lexical processing and found that nonwords took longer to classify as nonwords if they formed the beginnings of real words, regardless of syllable structure. This was in contrast to a second experiment which employed a visual lexical decision task, where nonwords took longer to classify only if they formed the first syllable of a word. It was concluded that the access code that activates lexical information in spoken word recognition is the first few phonemes regardless of syllable structure, whereas in printed word recognition the access code is the first (orthographically defined) syllable.

EEG has been central to investigations of the time course of various neural functions underpinning visual word recognition. Recently the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) paradigm has been increasingly adopted for word recognition studies due to its high signal-to-noise ratio. Such studies, however, have been typically framed around a single source in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT). Here, we combine SSVEP recorded from 16 adult native English speakers with a data-driven spatial filtering approach—Reliable Components Analysis (RCA)—to elucidate distinct functional sources with overlapping yet separable time courses and topographies that emerge when contrasting words with pseudofont visual controls. The first component topography was maximal over left vOT regions with a shorter latency (approximately 180 ms). A second component was maximal over more dorsal parietal regions with a longer latency (approximately 260 ms). Both components consistently emerged across a range of parameter manipulations including changes in the spatial overlap between successive stimuli, and changes in both base and deviation frequency. We then contrasted word-in-nonword and word-in-pseudoword to test the hierarchical processing mechanisms underlying visual word recognition. Results suggest that these hierarchical contrasts fail to evoke a unitary component that might be reasonably associated with lexical access.

Cognitive Processing in Bilinguals

Lexical processing in child and adult classroom second language learners: Uniqueness and similarities, and implications for cognitive models

Previous research has reported that lexical access in bilinguals is language non-selective. In the present study, we explored the extent to which cross-language orthographic neighborhood size (N-size) effects, an index of language non-selectivity, should be dissociated from markedness effects, a sub-lexical orthographic variable referring to the degree of language- shared (unmarked) versus specific (marked) orthography. Two proficiency groups of French/English bilinguals performed an English (L2) lexical decision task with three word and non-word conditions: (1) English words with large French N-size/unmarked orthography (price), (2) small French N-size/unmarked orthography (drive), and (3) small French N-size/marked orthography (write). Evidence was found for orthographic markedness effects, albeit with a different pattern for word and non-word processing: while marked words were facilitated (responded to faster and more accurately) compared to unmarked words, the opposite pattern emerged for non-words. The pattern of results was comparable in both proficiency groups. No evidence emerged for the influence of first language (L1) neighborhood on L2 word or non-word processing. Thus, the results emphasize the need to integrate orthographic markedness as a relevant psycholinguistic variable in bilingual models of visual word recognition such as BIA/+ and to take it into account when investigating cross- language effects and the issue of language non-selectivity during visual word recognition.

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.

Vowel harmony is a phenomenon in which the vowels in a word share some features (e.g., frontness vs. backness). It occurs in several families of languages (e.g., Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages) and serves as an effective segmenting cue in continuous speech and when reading compound words. The present study examined whether vowel harmony also plays a role in visual word recognition. We chose Turkish, a language with four front and four back vowels in which approximately 75% of words are harmonious. If vowel harmony contributes to the formation of coherent phonological codes during lexical access, harmonious words will reach a stable orthographic-phonological state more rapidly than disharmonious words. To test this hypothesis, in Experiment 1, we selected two types of monomorphemic Turkish words: harmonious (containing only front vowels or back vowels) and disharmonious (containing front and back vowels)-a parallel manipulation was applied to the pseudowords. Results showed faster lexical decisions for harmonious than disharmonious words, whereas vowel harmony did not affect pseudowords. In Experiment 2, where all words were harmonious, we found a small but reliable advantage for disharmonious over harmonious pseudowords. These findings suggest that vowel harmony helps the formation of stable phonological codes in Turkish words, but it does not play a key role in pseudoword rejection.

During the fourth age (80+ years), cognitive difficulties increase. Although language seems to resist the advancement of age, an older person without pathological developments in cognition may exhibit deficits in lexical access. This study examines the restrictions on lexical access in people aged 80 and older in word recognition and retrieval modalities through four lexical tasks. The effect of aging on response time and accuracy was measured using recognition (lexical decision/naming/priming) and retrieval (picture naming) tasks. A fourth age group (>80) and two third age groups (60-69/70-79) were compared according to lexical access modality and type of task employed through linear regression models. People aged 80 and older exhibit a strong lexical access constraint, as they are slower and less accurate in recognizing and retrieving words than both third age groups. These restrictions are more profound for the word retrieval modality, especially in the picture naming task. Impaired fluid intelligence and internode transmission deficits during advanced aging could further reduce the ability to recognize and/or retrieve words, having an impact on access speed and accuracy. Furthermore, the idea that crystallized intelligence could strengthen the accuracy of lexical access during aging is supported, specifically in word recognition modality.

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Two experiments investigated morphological decomposition in ambiguous novel compounds such as BUSHEATER, which can be parsed as either BUS-HEATER or BUSH-EATER. It was found that subjects' parsing choices for such words are influenced by orthographic constraints, but that these constraints do not operate prelexically. Lexical decision response times for ambiguous novel compounds were found to be longer than those for non-ambiguous novel compounds such as LARKEATER. This finding supports the view that all legal lexical entries in a multimorphemic string are automatically activated during visual word recognition. The claim that morphological parsing proceeds from left to right and lexical access is automatic and obligatory is presented as the Automatic Progressive Parsing and Lexical Excitation (APPLE) model of lexical processing.