The growth of lexical constraints on spoken word recognition

In this study, we examined the influence of various sources of constraint on spoken word recognition in a mispronunciation-detection task. Five- and 8-year-olds and adults were presented with words (intact or with word-initial or noninitial errors) from three different age-of-acquisition categories. "Intact" and "mispronounced" responses were collected for isolated words with or without a picture referent (Experiment 1) and for words in constraining or unconstraining sentences (Experiment 2). Some evidence for differential attention to word-initial as opposed to noninitial acoustic-phonetic information (and thus the influence of sequential lexical constraints on recognition) was apparent in young children's and adults' response criteria and in older children's and adults' reaction times. A more marked finding, however, was the variation in subjects' performance, according to several measures, with age and lexical familiarity (defined according to adults' subjective age-of-acquisition estimates). Children's strategies for responding to familiar and unfamiliar words in different contexts are discussed.     

Specificity of memory representations for spoken words

Many theories of spoken word recognition assume that lexical items are stored in memory as abstract representations. However, recent research (e.g., Goldinger, 1996) has suggested that representations of spoken words in memory are veridical exemplars that encode specific information, such as characteristics of the talker’s voice. If representations are exemplar based, effects of stimulus variation such as that arising from changes in the identity of the talker may have an effect on identification of and memory for spoken words. This prediction was examined for an implicit and explicit task (lexical decision and recognition, respectively). Comparable amounts of repetition priming in lexical decision were found for repeated words, regardless of whether the repetitions were in the same or in different voices. However, reaction times in the recognition task were faster if the repetition was in the same voice. These results suggest a role for both abstract and specific representations in models of spoken word recognition.     

The developmental turnpoint of orthographic consistency effects in speech recognition

The influence of orthography on children's online auditory word recognition was studied from the end of Grade 4 to the end of Grade 9 by examining the orthographic consistency effect in auditory lexical decision. Fourth-graders showed evidence of a widespread influence of orthography in their spoken word recognition system; words with rimes that can be spelled in two different ways (inconsistent) produced longer auditory lexical decision times and more errors than did consistent words. A similar consistency effect was also observed on pseudowords. With adult listeners, on exactly the same material, we replicated the usual pattern of an orthographic consistency effect restricted to words in lexical decision. From Grade 6 onward, this adult pattern of orthographic effect on spoken recognition is already observable.     

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.     

Early effects of neighborhood density and phonotactic probability of spoken words on event-related potentials

All current models of spoken word recognition propose that sound-based representations of spoken words compete with, or inhibit, one another during recognition. In addition, certain models propose that higher probability sublexical units facilitate recognition under certain circumstances. Two experiments were conducted examining ERPs to spoken words and nonwords simultaneously varying in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density. Results showed that the amplitude of the P2 potential was greater for high probability-density words and nonwords, suggesting an early inhibitory effect of neighborhood density. In order to closely examine the role of phonotactic probability, effects of initial phoneme frequency were also examined. The latency of the P2 potential was shorter for words with high initial-consonant probability, suggesting a facilitative effect of phonotactic probability. The current results are consistent with findings from previous studies using reaction time and eye-tracking paradigms and provide new insights into the time-course of lexical and sublexical activation and competition.     

The development of the orthographic consistency effect in speech recognition: from sublexical to lexical involvement

The influence of orthography on children's on-line auditory word recognition was studied from the end of Grade 2 to the end of Grade 4, by examining the orthographic consistency effect [Ziegler, J. C., & Ferrand, L. (1998). Orthography shapes the perception of speech: The consistency effect in auditory recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin &Review, 5, 683-689.] in auditory lexical decision and shadowing tasks. Words with rhymes that can be spelled in two different ways (inconsistent) produced longer auditory lexical decision and shadowing times and more errors than did consistent words. A similar consistency effect was also observed on pseudowords. The observation of a general consistency effect, both for words and pseudowords, in lexical decision and in shadowing suggests a widespread influence of orthography in the children's spoken word recognition system. On exactly the same material, with adult listeners we replicated the usual pattern of an orthographic consistency effect restricted to words in lexical decision [Ventura, P., Morais, J., Pattamadilok, C., & Kolinsky, R. (2004). The locus of the orthographic consistency effect in auditory word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 57-95; Ziegler, J. C., & Ferrand, L. (1998). Orthography shapes the perception of speech: The consistency effect in auditory recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin &Review, 5, 683-689]. A reanalysis of the lexical decision and shadowing results of Ventura et al. [Ventura, P., Morais, J., Pattamadilok, C., & Kolinsky, R. (2004). The locus of the orthographic consistency effect in auditory word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 57-95.] confirmed the discrepancy between the effects of orthographic consistency in child readers and adults. A further control experiment showed that orthographic consistency effects were not present in pre-readers. Results are interpreted considering the coexistence in children's reading of a mechanism of automatic access to well-specified orthographic representations of words and the persistence of grapho-phonological decoding procedures.     

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: Evidence from novel schwa words

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /??nyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.     

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: evidence from novel schwa words

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /??nyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.     

Lexical inhibition and sublexical facilitation are surprisingly long lasting

When a listener hears a word (beef), current theories of spoken word recognition posit the activation of both lexical (beef) and sublexical (/b/, /i/, /f/) representations. No lexical representation can be settled on for an unfamiliar utterance (peef). The authors examined the perception of nonwords (peef) as a function of words or nonwords heard 10-20 min earlier. In lexical decision, nonword recognition responses were delayed if a similar word had been heard earlier. In contrast, nonword processing was facilitated by the earlier presentation of a similar nonword (baff-paff). This pattern was observed for both word-initial (beef-peef), and word-final (job-jop) deviation. With the word-in-noise task, real word primes (beef) increased real word intrusions for the target nonword (peef), but only consonant-vowel (CV) or vowel-consonant (VC) intrusions were increased with similar pseudoword primes (baff-paff). The results across tasks and experiments support both a lexical neighborhood view of activation and sublexical representations based on chunks larger than individual phonemes (CV or VC sequences).     

Grammatical context constrains lexical competition in spoken word recognition

When perceiving spoken language, listeners must match the incoming acoustic phonetic input to lexical representations in memory. Models that quantify this process propose that the input activates multiple lexical representations in parallel and that these activated representations compete for recognition (Weber & Scharenborg, 2012). In two experiments, we assessed how grammatically constraining contexts alter the process of lexical competition. The results suggest that grammatical context constrains the lexical candidates that are activated to grammatically appropriate competitors. Stimulus words with little competition from items of the same grammatical class benefit more from the addition of grammatical context than do words with more within-class competition. The results provide evidence that top-down contextual information is integrated in the early stages of word recognition. We propose adding a grammatical class level of analysis to existing models of word recognition to account for these findings.     

The impact of music on learning and consolidation of novel words

Music can be a powerful mnemonic device, as shown by a body of literature demonstrating that listening to text sung to a familiar melody results in better memory for the words compared to conditions where they are spoken. Furthermore, patients with a range of memory impairments appear to be able to form new declarative memories when they are encoded in the form of lyrics in a song, while unable to remember similar materials after hearing them in the spoken modality. Whether music facilitates the acquisition of completely new information, such as new vocabulary, remains unknown. Here we report three experiments in which adult participants learned novel words in the spoken or sung modality. While we found no benefit of musical presentation on free recall or recognition memory of novel words, novel words learned in the sung modality were more strongly integrated in the mental lexicon compared to words learned in the spoken modality. This advantage for the sung words was only present when the training melody was familiar. The impact of musical presentation on learning therefore appears to extend beyond episodic memory and can be reflected in the emergence and properties of new lexical representations.     

Lexical exposure and word-form encoding in 1.5-year-olds

In this study, 1.5-year-olds were taught a novel word. Some children were familiarized with the word's phonological form before learning the word's meaning. Fidelity of phonological encoding was tested in a picture-fixation task using correctly pronounced and mispronounced stimuli. Only children with additional exposure in familiarization showed reduced recognition performance given slight mispronunciations relative to correct pronunciations; children with fewer exposures did not. Mathematical modeling of vocabulary exposure indicated that children may hear thousands of words frequently enough for accurate encoding. The results provide evidence compatible with partial failure of phonological encoding at 19 months of age, demonstrate that this limitation in learning does not always hinder word recognition, and show the value of infants' word-form encoding in early lexical development.     

Cross-modal working memory binding and L1-L2 word learning

The ability to create temporary binding representations of information from different sources in working memory has recently been found to relate to the development of monolingual word recognition in children. The current study explored this possible relationship in an adult word-learning context. We assessed whether the relationship between cross-modal working memory binding and lexical development would be observed in the learning of associations between unfamiliar spoken words and their semantic referents, and whether it would vary across experimental conditions in first- and second-language word learning. A group of English monolinguals were recruited to learn 24 spoken disyllable Mandarin Chinese words in association with either familiar or novel objects as semantic referents. They also took a working memory task in which their ability to temporarily bind auditory-verbal and visual information was measured. Participants’ performance on this task was uniquely linked to their learning and retention of words for both novel objects and for familiar objects. This suggests that, at least for spoken language, cross-modal working memory binding might play a similar role in second language-like (i.e., learning new words for familiar objects) and in more native-like situations (i.e., learning new words for novel objects). Our findings provide new evidence for the role of cross-modal working memory binding in L1 word learning and further indicate that early stages of picture-based word learning in L2 might rely on similar cognitive processes as in L1.     

不同母语环境下16个月婴儿词汇表征中声调的语义特性

采用跨通道注视偏好范式(IPLP)下的声调错读任务, 探究16个月中英婴儿熟悉词汇表征中普通话声调的音位语义特性(phonological specificity)。结果发现在先正确命名再声调错读的任务顺序下, 中英婴儿均在正确命名时表现出命名效应, 在错读时不能再认目标图片, 表现出错读效应, 说明普通话声调对16个月中英婴儿而言都具备语义特性。     

Orthographic influences in spoken word recognition: The consistency effect in semantic and gender categorization tasks

According to current models, spoken word recognition is driven by the phonological properties of the speech signal. However, several studies have suggested that orthographic information also influences recognition in adult listeners. In particular, it has been repeatedly shown that, in the lexical decision task, words that include rimes with inconsistent spellings (e.g., /-ip/ spelled -eap or -eep) are disadvantaged, as compared with words with consistent rime spelling. In the present study, we explored whether the orthographic consistency effect extends to tasks requiring people to process words beyond simple lexical access. Two different tasks were used: semantic and gender categorization. Both tasks produced reliable consistency effects. The data are discussed as suggesting that orthographic codes are activated during word recognition, or that the organization of phonological representations of words is affected by orthography during literacy acquisition.     

Lexical restructuring in the absence of literacy

Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.]). Although literacy was not explicitly mentioned in this lexical restructuring hypothesis, the process of learning to read and spell might also have a significant impact on the specification of lexical representations (e.g., [Carroll, J. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). The effects of global similarity between stimuli on children’s judgments of rime and alliteration. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 327-342.]; [Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133-151.]). This is what we checked in the present study. We manipulated word frequency and neighborhood density in a gating task (Experiment 1) and a word-identification-in-noise task (Experiment 2) presented to Portuguese literate and illiterate adults. Ex-illiterates were also tested in Experiment 2 in order to disentangle the effects of vocabulary size and literacy. There was an interaction between word frequency and neighborhood density, which was similar in the three groups. These did not differ even for the words that are supposed to undergo lexical restructuring the latest (low frequency words from sparse neighborhoods). Thus, segmental lexical representations seem to develop independently of literacy. While segmental restructuring is not affected by literacy, it constrains the development of phoneme awareness as shown by the fact that, in Experiment 3, neighborhood density modulated the phoneme deletion performance of both illiterates and ex-illiterates.     

Examining the interactivity of lexical orthographic and phonological processing.

The number and type of connections involving different levels of orthographic and phonological representations differentiate between several models of spoken and visual word recognition. At the sublexical level of processing, Borowsky, Owen, and Fonos (1999) demonstrated evidence for direct processing connections from grapheme representations to phoneme representations (i.e., a sensitivity effect) over and above any bias effects, but not in the reverse direction. Neural network models of visual word recognition implement an orthography to phonology processing route that involves the same connections for processing sublexical and lexical information, and thus a similar pattern of cross-modal effects for lexical stimuli are expected by models that implement this single type of connection (i.e., orthographic lexical processing should directly affect phonological lexical processing, but not in the reverse direction). Furthermore, several models of spoken word perception predict that there should be no direct connections between orthographic representations and phonological representations, regardless of whether the connections are sublexical or lexical. The present experiments examined these predictions by measuring the influence of a cross-modal word context on word target discrimination. The results provide constraints on the types of connections that can exist between orthographic lexical representations and phonological lexical representations.     

Effect of Representational Distance Between Meanings on Recognition of Ambiguous Spoken Words

Previous research indicates that mental representations of word meanings are distributed along both semantic and syntactic dimensions such that nouns and verbs are relatively distinct from one another. Two experiments examined the effect of representational distance between meanings on recognition of ambiguous spoken words by comparing recognition of unambiguous words, noun–verb homonyms, and noun–noun homonyms. In Experiment 1, auditory lexical decision was fastest for unambiguous words, slower for noun–verb homonyms, and slowest for noun–noun homonyms. In Experiment 2, response times for matching spoken words to pictures followed the same pattern and eye fixation time courses revealed converging, gradual time course differences between conditions. These results indicate greater competition between meanings of ambiguous words when the meanings are from the same grammatical class (noun–noun homonyms) than when they are from different grammatical classes (noun–verb homonyms).     

Exploring the role of lexical stress in lexical recognition

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the role of suprasegmental information in the processing of spoken words. All primes consisted of truncated spoken Dutch words. Recognition of visually presented word targets was facilitated by prior auditory presentation of the first two syllables of the same words as primes, but only if they were appropriately stressed (e.g., OKTOBER preceded by okTO-); inappropriate stress, compatible with another word (e.g., OKTOBER preceded by OCto-, the beginning of octopus), produced inhibition. Monosyllabic fragments (e.g., OC-) also produced facilitation when appropriately stressed; if inappropriately stressed, they produced neither facilitation nor inhibition. The bisyllabic fragments that were compatible with only one word produced facilitation to semantically associated words, but inappropriate stress caused no inhibition of associates. The results are explained within a model of spoken-word recognition involving competition between simultaneously activated phonological representations followed by activation of separate conceptual representations for strongly supported lexical candidates; at the level of the phonological representations, activation is modulated by both segmental and suprasegmental information.     

Effects of modality on subjective frequency estimates and processing of spoken and printed words

Previous research (Garber & Pisoni, 1991; Pisoni & Garber, 1990) has demonstrated that subjective familiarity judgments for words are not differentially affected by the modality (visual or auditory) in which the words are presented, suggesting that participants base their judgments on fairly abstract, modality-independent representations in memory. However, in a recent large-scale study in Japanese (Amano, Kondo, & Kakehi, 1995), marked modality effects on familiarity ratings were observed. The present research further examined possible modality differences in subjective ratings and their implications for word recognition. Specially selected words were presented to participants for frequency judgments. In particular, participants were asked how frequently they read, wrote, heard, or said a given spoken or printed word. These ratings were then regressed against processing times in auditory and visual lexical decision and naming tasks. Our results suggest modality dependence for some lexical representations.