Lexical processing and text integration of function and content words: Evidence from priming and eye fixations

The results of two experiments comparing processing of function words and content words are reported. In Experiment 1, priming was present for both related function and related content word pairs, as measured in lexical decision response times. In Experiment 2, participants' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing either a high- or a low-frequency function or content target word. Average word length and word frequency were matched across the function and content word conditions. Function words showed frequency effects in first-fixation and gaze duration that were similar to those seen for content words. Clear differences in on-line processing of function and content words emerged in later processing measures. These differences were reflected in reading patterns and reading time measures. There was inflated processing time in the phrase immediately following a low-frequency function word, and participants made more regressions to the target word in this condition than in the other three conditions. The priming effects in lexical decision and the word frequency effects in initial processing measures in silent reading for both word types were taken as evidence of common lexical processing for function and content words. The observed differences in later processing measures in the eye-movement data were taken as evidence of differences in the role that the two word types have in sentence processing beyond the lexical level.     

Building syntactic structures in speaking: a bilingual exploration

In a series of three experiments we investigated syntactic priming using a sentence recall task. Participants read and memorized a target sentence for later recall. After reading a prime sentence and engaging in a distraction task, they were asked to produce the target sentence aloud. Earlier investigations have shown that this task is sensitive to a syntactic priming effect. That is, the syntactic form of the prime sentence sometimes influences the syntactic form of the recalled target. In this paper we report on a variation on this task, using Spanish-English bilingual participants. In the first two experiments we replicated the prepositional phrase priming effect using English target sentences and Spanish prime sentences. In the final experiment we investigated two additional syntactic forms, using Spanish target sentences and English prime sentences. Implications for models of syntax generation and bilingual speech production are discussed.     

Semantic context effects and priming in word association

Two experiments investigated priming in word association, an implicit memory task. In the study phase of Experiment 1, semantically ambiguous target words were presented in sentences that biased their interpretation. The appropriate interpretation of the target was either congruent or incongruent with the cue presented in a subsequent word association task. Priming (i.e., a higher proportion of target responses relative to a nonstudied baseline) was obtained for the congruent condition, but not for the incongruent condition. In Experiment 2, study sentences emphasized particular meaning aspects of nonambiguous targets. The word association task showed a higher proportion of target responses for targets studied in the more congruent sentence context than for targets studied in the less congruent sentence context. These results indicate that priming in word association depends largely on the storage of information relating the cue and target.     

Evidence for word length coding during visual word recognition

In a masked priming procedure manipulating orthographic neighbourhood size, the priming word activates a number of word candidates of which the target could be one. Whether the target is one of the candidates or not determines how quickly it is recognised. However, the efficiency of lexical processing may be markedly less if all possible candidates are activated. One solution to this problem is if the visual system uses prime length information to reduce the number of candidates to a more manageable amount. Here, we investigated in two masked priming experiments whether prime length and orthographic information combine to facilitate target word recognition. In Experiment 1, we showed that the efficiency of visual word recognition is not influenced by the length of primes alone. However, when combined with orthographically related primes, word length coding is preserved. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether length priming affects recognition of short and long words differently. Results showed that only short words benefit from a same-length orthographically related prime, and that the priming effect does not generalise to longer words. These results suggest that the length of a word is not an essential feature in lexical processing, but that it can facilitate recognition by constraining the activation of orthographically related words.     

Word order priming in written and spoken sentence production

An experiment is reported that showed priming of the word order of auxiliary verb and past participle in Dutch subordinate clauses, both in speaking and in writing. Participants completed sentence fragments to full sentences. Prime sentence fragments were constrained so as to be completed with only one possible word order. Target sentence fragments, presented immediately after the prime fragments, could be completed with the same word order as that of the prime and an alternative order with the two words exchanged. Significant priming effects were obtained, so that the same word orders tended to be used in prime and target. We interpret this as evidence for a distinct process of constituent structure linearization during sentence production, which serves to ensure the fluency of speech and writing.     

Phonological and conceptual activation in speech comprehension

We propose that speech comprehension involves the activation of token representations of the phonological forms of current lexical hypotheses, separately from the ongoing construction of a conceptual interpretation of the current utterance. In a series of cross-modal priming experiments, facilitation of lexical decision responses to visual target words (e.g., time) was found for targets that were semantic associates of auditory prime words (e.g., date) when the primes were isolated words, but not when the same primes appeared in sentence contexts. Identity priming (e.g., faster lexical decisions to visual date after spoken date than after an unrelated prime) appeared, however, both with isolated primes and with primes in prosodically neutral sentences. Associative priming in sentence contexts only emerged when sentence prosody involved contrastive accents, or when sentences were terminated immediately after the prime. Associative priming is therefore not an automatic consequence of speech processing. In no experiment was there associative priming from embedded words (e.g., sedate-time), but there was inhibitory identity priming (e.g., sedate-date) from embedded primes in sentence contexts. Speech comprehension therefore appears to involve separate distinct activation both of token phonological word representations and of conceptual word representations. Furthermore, both of these types of representation are distinct from the long-term memory representations of word form and meaning.     

句子启动范式下的道德概念空间隐喻:匹配抑制还是匹配易化?

本研究在四个实验中通过应用句子启动范式来考察道德概念空间隐喻的匹配抑制与匹配易化。实验1中,被试先阅读一个含有垂直空间信息的句子,然后立即对随后出现的一个词进行道德词或者不道德词的分类判断。实验2和实验3分别要求被试关注句子中空间信息的终止位置或起始位置。实验4设置了延迟反应,要求被试在句子消失4秒后再进行词汇分类判断。结果显示,前三个实验都出现了明显的道德概念空间隐喻的非绑定性的匹配抑制,即"下-道德"或者"上-不道德",而在实验4中出现了隐喻的非绑定性的匹配易化,即"下-不道德"。这一结果证实空间信息句子的加工确实能够激活道德隐喻。但是由于句子加工时间较长,如果空间信息与道德概念占用相同的资源,就会导致道德空间隐喻的匹配抑制。如果有足够时间加工句子中的空间信息,就能够启动随后的道德概念加工,出现匹配易化。可见,资源的竞争与激活是道德概念空间隐喻出现匹配抑制和匹配易化的关键。     

Identity primes produce facilitation in a colour naming task

Five experiments examined associative or identity priming effects in a colour-naming task with colour-neutral words. In Experiment 1, subjects instructed to read the prime silently showed no associative priming effect but a colour-naming facilitation with identity priming. In Experiment 2, the typical associative priming interference in colour naming was demonstrated in subjects recalling the prime word, but not in subjects reading the prime silently, whereas associative primes facilitated word naming regardless of the prime response requirement. The remaining studies investigated the colour-naming facilitation observed with identity primes. Experiment 3 showed no effects on the facilitation of colour naming from varying the letter case of a silently read prime. Experiment 4 showed facilitation when subjects recalled the prime, and a target frequency effect, with faster colour-naming latencies for high- and medium- than low-frequency targets. In Experiment 5, there was no facilitation for naming the colour of target words paired with non-word primes differing in their initial letter from the target. Taken together, the results suggest that the facilitation of colour naming following identical primes reflects faster target word recognition, whereas the associative priming interference reflects an attentional effect.     

Context effects in visual word recognition: Lexical relatedness and syntactic context

In three experiments, we investigated how associative word-word priming effects in German depend on different types of syntactic context in which the related words are embedded. The associative relation always concerned a verb as prime and a noun as target. Prime word and target word were embedded in visually presented strings of words that formed either a correct sentence, a scrambled list of words, or a sentence in which the target noun and the preceding definite article disagreed in syntactic gender. In contrast to previous studies (O’Seaghdha, 1989; Simpson, Peterson, Casteel, & Burgess, 1989), associative priming effects were not only obtained in correct sentences but also in scrambled word lists. Associative priming, however, was not obtained when the definite article and the target noun disagreed in syntactic gender. The latter finding suggests that a rather local violation of syntactic coherence reduces or eliminates word-word priming effects. The results are discussed in the context of related work on the effect of gender dis-/agreement between a syntactic context and a target noun.     

句子完成与时间缓冲对信息整合的启动作用

探讨句子完成和时间缓冲因素在阅读过程启动背景信息整合的作用。包括3个实验,被试是华南师范大学198名一年级本科生。采用移动窗口技术,要求被试阅读14篇一致性版本与不一致版本的文章,然后对不同条件下目标句阅读时间或探测反应时进行统计分析。实验1重复Guzman和Klin的研究,并进一步探讨单纯的句子完成因素是否能即时启动整合。结果表明,在单纯的句子完成条件下,一致版本和不一致版本的目标句阅读时间和探测反应时有显著差异,说明目标句阅读时已经即时启动了背景信息的整合。实验2探讨Guman和Klin关于缓冲可以即时启动整合的研究是否混合了句子完成因素的作用,结果表明,当在目标句后面增加连接词时,会产生句子完成的暗示,从而可以即时启动整合,Guzman和Klin关于缓冲可以启动整合的结果是值得商榷的。实验3从Guzman和Klin的研究设计中分离出句子完成因素,探讨单纯的时间缓冲是否可以即时启动整合,结果表明,单纯的缓冲不能即时启动整合。研究的结果初步证明,句子完成是启动信息整合的充分必要条件,而单纯的时间缓冲不能起到这种即时启动作用。     

Lexically independent priming in online sentence comprehension

Two eye-tracking experiments investigated what happens when people read pairs of sentences that have the same syntactic structure. Previous experiments have shown priming in online sentence processing only when critical lexical material overlaps between the prime and the target sentence. In the current study, participants were asked to read sentences containing modifier—goal ambiguities. Half of the target sentences were preceded by sentences with the same structure, and half were preceded by sentences with a different structure. In Experiment 1, the prime—target pairs had the same main verb. In Experiment 2, the prime—target pairs had different main verbs. Facilitated target sentence processing was observed in both Experiments 1 and 2 when the target sentences were preceded by a prime sentence with the same syntactic structure. These results provide the first evidence of lexically independent, between-sentence structural priming in online sentence comprehension.     

Spatial distance effects on incremental semantic interpretation of abstract sentences: Evidence from eye tracking

A large body of evidence has shown that visual context information can rapidly modulate language comprehension for concrete sentences and when it is mediated by a referential or a lexical-semantic link. What has not yet been examined is whether visual context can also modulate comprehension of abstract sentences incrementally when it is neither referenced by, nor lexically associated with, the sentence. Three eye-tracking reading experiments examined the effects of spatial distance between words (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2 and 3) on participants’ reading times for sentences that convey similarity or difference between two abstract nouns (e.g., ‘Peace and war are certainly different...’). Before reading the sentence, participants inspected a visual context with two playing cards that moved either far apart or close together. In Experiment 1, the cards turned and showed the first two nouns of the sentence (e.g., ‘peace’, ‘war’). In Experiments 2 and 3, they turned but remained blank. Participants’ reading times at the adjective (Experiment 1: first-pass reading time; Experiment 2: total times) and at the second noun phrase (Experiment 3: first-pass times) were faster for sentences that expressed similarity when the preceding words/objects were close together (vs. far apart) and for sentences that expressed dissimilarity when the preceding words/objects were far apart (vs. close together). Thus, spatial distance between words or entirely unrelated objects can rapidly and incrementally modulate the semantic interpretation of abstract sentences.     

Semantic facilitation across sensory modalities in the processing of individual words and sentences

The effect of semantic priming upon lexical decisions made for words in isolation (Experiment 1) and during sentence comprehension (Experiment 2) was investigated using a cross-modal lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, subjects made lexical decisions to both auditory and visual stimuli. Processing auditorily presented words facilitated subsequent lexical decisions on semantically related visual words. In Experiment 2, subjects comprehended auditorily presented sentences while simultaneously making lexical decisions for visually presented stimuli. Lexical decisions were facilitated when a visual word appeared immediately following a related word in the sentential material. Lexical decisions were also facilitated when the visual word appeared three syllables following closure of the clause containing the related material. Arguments are made for autonomy of semantic priming during sentence comprehension.     

Eye movements of highly skilled and average readers: Differential effects of frequency and predictability

This study offers a glimpse of the moment-by-moment processes used by highly skilled and average readers during silent reading. The eye movements of adult readers were monitored while they silently read sentences. Fixation durations and the spatial-temporal patterns of eye movements were examined to see whether the two groups of readers exhibited differential effects of frequency and/or predictability. In Experiment 1, high- and low-frequency target words were embedded in nonconstraining sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, the same participants read high- and low-frequency target words that were either predictable or unpredictable, embedded in highly constraining sentence contexts. Results indicated that when target words appeared in highly constraining sentence contexts, the average readers showed different effects of frequency and predictability from those shown in the highly skilled readers. It appears that reading skill can interact with predictability to affect the word recognition processes used during silent reading.     

阅读中的快速启动范式述评

快速启动范式（Sereno & Rayner, 1992）是一种基于呈现随眼动变化技术而设计的眼动范式,主要用于研究中央凹视野内字词识别的瞬时启动,通过精确控制启动条件和启动时窗,以考察词汇通达过程中词汇水平（如,词频、词长等）、亚词汇水平（如,语音、语义、字形等）信息的加工时序。本文从基本原理、设计基础、应用领域、注意事项等方面对快速启动范式进行了较为深入的解读和介绍,并结合已有的研究成果,指出了该范式在汉语阅读中的应用价值。     

The influence of lexical and conceptual constraints on reading mixed-language sentences: Evidence from eye fixations and naming times

In two experiments, we explored the degree to which sentence context effects operate at a lexical or conceptual level by examining the processing of mixed-language sentences by fluent Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, subjects’ eye movements were monitored while they read English sentences in which sentence constraint, word frequency, and language of target word were manipulated. A frequency × constraint interaction was found when target words appeared in Spanish, but not in English. First fixation durations were longer for high-frequency Spanish words when these were embedded in high-constraint sentences than in low-constraint sentences. This result suggests that the conceptual restrictions produced by the sentence context were met, but that the lexical restrictions were not. The same result did not occur for low-frequency Spanish words, presumably because the slower access of low-frequency words provided more processing time for the resolution of this conflict. Similar results were found in Experiment 2 using rapid serial visual presentation when subjects named the target words aloud. It appears that sentence context effects are influenced by both semantic/conceptual and lexical information.     

Interaction of stimulus and contextual information during reading: Identifying words within sentences

In general, studies on the effects of a sentence context on word identification have focused on how context affects the efficiency of processing a single target word, presented separately from the context. Such studies probably would be incapable of measuring contextual facilitation resulting from cascaded or parallel processing of neighboring words within a sentence. To measure these and other types of facilitation, we presented entire phrases and sentences for subjects to read as fast as possible and to monitor for nonwords. Subjects read at rates representative of natural reading. Experiment 1 demonstrated a large contextual facilitation effect on decision time. Experiment 2 showed that facilitation is caused by specific semantic information and, perhaps to a greater degree, by nonpredictive syntactic information. Experiment 3 showed that the amount of facilitation is greater than could be accounted for by separate contributions from autonomous word level and sentence level processes. These results present difficulties for an autonomous model of reading, but are consistent with interactive models, in which the results of ongoing sentential analyses are combined with stimulus information to identify words.     

Constraints on semantic priming in reading: A fixation time analysis

In Experiment 1, subjects read sentences containing a category name or a neutral prime that was followed by a target exemplar that varied in typicality. Fixation time on the target exemplar was the measure of processing difficulty. The category name facilitated processing for both high- and low-typicality exemplars. Unexpectedly, high-typicality exemplars were processed more quickly than low-typicality exemplars in both primed and unprimed conditions. Experiment 2 extended the priming effect to primary associates. Most importantly, the priming effect was influenced by the syntactic structure of the stimulus sentence. When both the prime and the associated target word were in the same clause, semantic priming occurred, but when the prime and target were in different clauses, no associative facilitation was observed. These results were interpreted as supporting a clausal processing hypothesis based on an autonomous modular view of the language processing system. Furthermore, the results were consistent with direct control models of eye movements, which claim that fixation duration reflects the timing of processing related to the word currently under fixation.     

Priming of new associations in reading time: What is learned?

The priming of new associations has been a controversial topic, with some studies finding significant effects but others failing to replicate these results. Three studies investigated the priming of new associations in a reading time task, presenting lists of word pairs that were read aloud as quickly as possible. In Experiment 1, significant priming of new associations was found after two study presentations, replicating similar results by Moscovitch, Winocur, and MacLachan (1986). In Experiment 2, reading time was facilitated for intact pairs when word positions remained constant relative to when word positions were reversed. This suggested that the associative priming effect was related to specific lower level features of the word pairs rather than to abstract associations. In Experiment 3, the insertion of the wordand between test words eliminated the pairing-specific effect, placing the locus of new association priming at the transition between words within pairs. These findings demonstrate that the knowledge that supports priming of new associations in the reading time task involves perceptual or articulatory information about the transitions between words rather than abstract associative knowledge.