Learning new word meanings from context: a study of eye movements

This study examined how readers establish the meaning of a new word from the sentence context during silent reading. Readers' eye movements were monitored while they read pairs of sentences containing a target word, context, and a word related to the target word. The target word varied in familiarity (high, low, or novel). The context varied in informativeness about the meaning of the target word (informative or neutral). The amount of time readers spent on the context depended on both the familiarity of the target word and the informativeness of the context. Readers spent additional time on the related word only when the context was neutral and the target was novel. These results indicate that readers were able to determine which areas of text were relevant and used the information to infer a meaning for the novel word.     

Learning new meanings for old words: effects of semantic relatedness

Changes to our everyday activities mean that adult language users need to learn new meanings for previously unambiguous words. For example, we need to learn that a "tweet" is not only the sound a bird makes, but also a short message on a social networking site. In these experiments, adult participants learned new fictional meanings for words with a single dominant meaning (e.g., "ant") by reading paragraphs that described these novel meanings. Explicit recall of these meanings was significantly better when there was a strong semantic relationship between the novel meaning and the existing meaning. This relatedness effect emerged after relatively brief exposure to the meanings (Experiment 1), but it persisted when training was extended across 7?days (Experiment 2) and when semantically demanding tasks were used during this extended training (Experiment 3). A lexical decision task was used to assess the impact of learning on online recognition. In Experiment 3, participants responded more quickly to words whose new meaning was semantically related than to those with an unrelated meaning. This result is consistent with earlier studies showing an effect of meaning relatedness on lexical decision, and it indicates that these newly acquired meanings become integrated with participants' preexisting knowledge about the meanings of words.     

Access to concrete word meanings in the cerebral hemispheres: facilitation and inhibition effects

In 2002 Shibahara and Lucero-Wagoner, using a priming paradigm, reported a larger facilitation for concrete noun pairs in the right than left hemisphere when the stimulus onset asynchrony was 250 msec. Their related prime-target pairs were similar not only in meaning but also perceptual attributes, such as shape. They had reported such perceptual information to be available only in the right hemisphere early in target processing. Thus, we predicted that, when the stimulus onset asynchrony is long, there would be no effect of perceptual information on target processing in the right hemisphere, resulting in no hemispheric differences in the amount of facilitation. We also predicted that target processing would be inhibited by prior presentation of unrelated primes only in the left hemisphere because inhibition seems to be produced by the attention system in the left hemisphere. The present experiment was designed to test these predictions, using the stimulus onset asynchrony of 550 msec. and the same prime-target pairs. Analysis showed no hemispheric differences in the amount of facilitation, and inhibition effects for unrelated pairs were produced in both hemispheres. It is suggested that the inhibition effects in each hemisphere might be produced by different mechanisms.     

Children's printed word database: Continuities and changes over time in children's early reading vocabulary

In this paper we introduce a comprehensive database of the vocabulary in reading materials used by 5 – 9 year old children in the UK. The database is available on‐line http:www.essex.ac.ukpsychologycpwd and allows researchers into early reading development the possibility of rigorous control over critical characteristics of experimental stimuli such as word frequency, regularity and length, frequency of grapheme‐phoneme correspondences, orthographic and phonological neighbourhoods etc. The on‐line database is also a resource that can be used by practitioners with interests in literacy development and literacy instruction. It can be used to obtain characteristics for a user‐generated list of words, or else to generate a list of words according to constraints specified by the user. Here we present an overview of the construction of the database, the materials entered into it, the survey of schools by which we obtained information about the books that were most likely to be used by children in each age group, and the search features available on the database website. We also discuss certain characteristics of the Vocabulary itself and compare these with those reported in an earlier non‐representative database reported in Stuart, Dixon, Masterson and Gray (2003). We then present a detailed analysis of the characteristics of Vocabulary in books used in the Reception year, against the background of recent recommendations for change in the early teaching of reading. Finally, we present data showing that the database is indeed already proving a useful resource for both practitioners and researchers.     

Associations to unfamiliar words: Learning the meanings of new words

Five experiments were designed to examine whether subjects attend to different aspects of meaning for familiar and unfamiliar words. In Experiments 1–3, subjects gave free associations to high- and low-familiarity words from the same taxonomic category (e.g.,seltzer:sarsparilla; Experiment 1), from the same noun synonym set (e.g.,baby:neonate; Experiment 2), and from the same verb synonym set (e.g.,abscond:escape; Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, subjects first read a context sentence containing the stimulus word and then gave associations; stimuli were novel words or either high- or low-familiarity nouns. Low-familiarity and novel words elicited more nonsemantically based responses (e.g.,engram:graham) than did high-familiarity words. Of the responses semantically related to the stimulus, low-familiarity and novel words elicited a higher proportion of definitional responses [category (e.g.,sarsparilla:soda), synonym (e.g.,neonate:newborn), and coordinate (e.g.,armoire:dresser)], whereas high-familiarity stimuli elicited a higher proportion of event-based responses [thematic (e.g.,seltzer:glass) and noun:verb (e.g.,baby:cry)]. Unfamiliar words appear to elicit a shift of attentional resources from relations useful in understanding the message to relations useful in understanding the meaning of the unfamiliar word.     

Brain dynamics of word familiarization in 20-month-olds: effects of productive vocabulary size

The present study investigated the brain mechanisms involved during young children's receptive familiarization with new words, and whether the dynamics of these mechanisms are related to the child's productive vocabulary size. To this end, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 20-month-old children in a pseudoword repetition task. Results revealed distinct patterns of repetition effects for children with large and small productive vocabularies. High producers showed evidence of recognizing the novel words already after three presentations, while the low producers needed five presentations to display a recognition effect. The familiarization process was manifested in the modulations of two components, the N200-400 and a later fronto-central component, which appeared to increase in amplitude until a certain level of encoding was reached and then decrease with further repetition. These findings suggest a relation between the onset of the productive vocabulary spurt and the rate of receptive word familiarization.     

A recognition test of vocabulary using signal-detection measures,and some correlates of word and nonword recognition

In the first of three experiments, university undergraduates were presented a list of 300 words and 100 nonwords in two sessions. Their confidence that an item was a word was indicated for each item on a 6-point scale. This experiment demonstrated the feasibility of creating a recognition test of vocabulary. In Expeiment II, 100 items were chosen to form a subtest, and the subtest was cross-validated on a new sample of subjects. The tests in Experiments I and II were scored using signal-detection measures. The primary criterion, SAT (verbal) scores, correlated approximately .60 with the test scores. In Experiment III subjects scaled the words and nonwords for four psychological attributes. These were submitted to a stepwise regression with the confidence ratings from Experiment I as the dependent variable. It was concluded that associability. frequency, orthography, and pronounceability all may be components of word recognition. However, only frequency was found to be a significant predictor of the confidence of recognition of nonwords.     

Withstanding the test of time: The 1978 semantic word norms

This article accompanies the archiving by the Pychonomic Society of the Toglia and Battig (1978) semantic word norms. Herein are outlined the various phases of the project, as well as the challenges that were faced in staying the course during the labor-intensive development of the norms. An examination of the number of citations of this set of norms over the years demonstrates a stable employment of these norms by investigators in many fields. Indeed, a concluding section details the wide range of research topics that have been studied with the use of this extensive set of word ratings. The complete Toglia and Battig article and norms may be downloaded as supplemental materials for this article from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Phonological effects in visual word recognition: investigating the impact of feedback activation

P. M. Pexman, S. J. Lupker, and D. Jared (2001) reported longer response latencies in lexical decision tasks (LDTs) for homophones (e.g., maid) than for nonhomophones, and attributed this homophone effect to orthographic competition created by feedback activation from phonology. In the current study, two predictions of this feedback account were tested: (a) In LDT, observe homophone effects should be observed but not regularity or homograph effects because most exception words (e.g., pint) and homographs (e.g., wind) have different feedback characteristics than homophones do, and (b) in a phonological LDT ("does it sound like a word?"), regularity and homograph effects should be observed but not homophone effects. Both predictions were confirmed. These results support the claim that feedback activation from phonology plays a significant role in visual word recognition.     

Case-mixing effects on children's word recognition: Lexical feedback and development

Presenting words in MiXeD cAsE has previously been shown to disrupt naming performance of adult readers. This effect is greater on nonwords than it is on real words. There have been two main accounts of this interaction. First, case mixing may disrupt naming via non-lexical spellingto-sound correspondences to a greater extent than it disrupts lexical naming. Alternatively, stored lexical knowledge of words may feed back to a visual analysis level during processing of a visually presented word, helping known words to overcome the visual disruption caused by case mixing. In the present study, when young children (aged 6 and 8 years) were tested, case mixing did not disrupt nonword naming more than word naming. However, slightly older children (aged 9 years) demonstrated the same pattern of performance as adults. These results support the view that topdown lexical information can aid overcoming visual disruption to words, and that beginning readers have not developed the stored word knowledge necessary to allow this. In addition, a greater case-mixing effect on high-frequency words for the youngest age group (6-year-olds) suggests that their word recognition may be based more on wholistic visual features than is that of older children.     

Goal regulation across time: the effects of feedback and affect

This research focused on the processes individuals use to regulate their goals across time. Two studies examined goal regulation following task performance with 6 samples of participants in a series of 8-trial task performance experiments. The experiments involved: (a) 3 task types, (b) 2 goal types, and (c) actual or manipulated performance feedback referring to the focal participant's own performance or to the participant's performance compared with others' performance. Applying multilevel methods, the authors examined (a) how performance feedback influences subsequent goals within individuals across both negative and positive performance feedback ranges, and (b) the mediating role of affect in explaining the relationship between feedback and subsequent goal setting. Results showed that participants adjusted their goals downwardly following negative feedback and created positive goal-performance discrepancies by raising their goals following positive feedback. In each sample, affect mediated substantial proportions of the feedback-goals relationship within individuals.     

Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meanings

Targets related to ambiguous primes were projected to the left and right visual fields in a lexical priming experiment with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of 35 and 750 msec. Right visual field results were similar to our earlier results with central projection (G. B. Simpson & C. Burgess, 1985, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 11, 28-39). Facilitation was found for the more frequent meaning at both SOAs and a decrease in facilitation for the less frequent meaning at the longer SOA. In contrast, left visual field results indicated a decay of facilitation for the more frequent meaning at the longer SOA, while activation for the subordinate meaning increased. Results suggest that, while automatic processing occurs in both hemispheres, only the left hemisphere engages in controlled processing of ambiguous word meanings. In addition, the present results support the idea that the right hemisphere has a special role in ambiguity resolution and that the right hemisphere lexicon possesses a richer endowment than earlier thought.     

Preference for situations involving effort, time pressure, and feedback in relation to type A behavior, locus of control, and test anxiety

Eighty subjects from an introductory psychology course rated the desirability of eight course structures that differed according to all combinations of the presence or absence of effort required for success, time pressure, and the provision of feedback. Subjects also completed questionnaire measures of the Type A behavior pattern, test anxiety, and external locus of control. Results showed that the Type A behavior pattern was negatively related to external locus of control and that externals tended to have higher test anxiety scores than internals. Multiple regression analyses that involved the personality variables and age and gender showed that the Type A variable predicted preference for course structures that involved effort and feedback and that external control predicted preference for course structures that were independent of effort and provided little feedback. Test anxiety and desirability ratings were positively correlated for the course structure that was not dependent on effort, had little time pressure, and had little feedback. The results were consistent with the view that individuals seek out and prefer situations that are consistent with their personality characteristics.     

Orthographically mediated inhibition effects: evidence of activational feedback during visual word recognition

Models of visual word recognition that have adopted an interactive activation framework (e.g., Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller, 1993; Grainger & Jacobs, 1996) assume that activation can spread from semantic to orthographic representations via a feedback mechanism during visual word recognition. The present study used a mediated priming paradigm to test whether such feedback exists and, if so, under what conditions. Participants named aloud targets that were preceded either by a semantically related prime (e.g., dog-cat) or by a prime that was related to the target via a mediating word (e.g., cat-[dog]-bog). Direct evidence of activational feedback was obtained in the form of orthographically mediated inhibition effects. These mediated inhibition effects are consistent with activational feedback and support models of visual word recognition that have adopted an interactive activation framework.     

Correlates of intelligence in computer measured aspects of prose vocabulary: word length, diversity, and rarity

Computer measured aspects of prose vocabulary as correlates of intelligence are of interest because they offer the potential of assessing intelligence in situations where more direct assessment (e.g. through IQ tests) is either impractically expensive or (as in the case of populations that lived in the past) impossible. This study assessed a word-length measure (average number of letters), two word-diversity measures (ratio of number of different to number of total words, and Yule's Characteristic K, which indicates the repeat rate for words), and a word-rarity measure (proportion of words present on a rare-words list). In the first part of the study, essays of 120 students in Grade 11 and 12 in a private American high-school for whom Cooperative School and College Ability Test (SCAT) scores (which correlate with IQ test scores) were available, were assessed in terms of the vocabulary measures. Only the word-rarity and word-length measures correlated significantly with SCAT scores, and the highest correlations were manifested by the word-rarity measure. In the study's second part, the vocabulary measures were applied to articles selected from American newspapers representing African American (119 articles), general (110 articles), and Jewish-American (109 articles) communities, among which, for whatever reasons, reliable average IQ performance differences have been found. Only the word-rarity measure discriminated in the predicted way among the three sorts of newspapers. Implications for other potential uses of the computerized word-rarity measure for assessing temporal, social, and geographic group differences in intelligence are discussed.     

Treatment, subtype, and word type effects in dyslexic children''s response to remediation

Children diagnosed as accuracy-disabled or rate-disabled readers (Lovett, 1984a, 1986, 1987) were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions providing training in word recognition and decoding skills (DS), oral and written language (OWLS), or classroom survival skills (an alternative treatment control). The experimental treatment programs exerted a positive treatment effect on the word recognition performances of both groups, but treatment-specific changes in contextual reading and oral language skill were not observed. Pre- and post-treatment comparisons on an experimental word recognition task revealed a post-test advantage for DS-trained children of both subgroups. Accuracy-disabled readers demonstrated treatment-specific gains for both orthographically regular words (e.g., wade) and for exception words (e.g., broad), with their gains greater on exception words. Rate-disabled children demonstrated treatment-specific gains only for exception words, but exhibited these gains following both the DS and the OWLS treatments. Although both experimental treatment programs were associated with a positive outcome for the rate disabled subgroup, DS training was associated with relatively greater treatment gain. These data suggest that the critical variables underlying the effectiveness of the DS treatment include the specific lexical knowledge these disabled readers acquired, their greater reliance on an orthographic pattern procedure in word recognition, and/or the fact that newly acquired items were practiced to a point approximating automatization.     

Remembering less and inferring more: effects of time of judgment on inferences about unknown attributes

Perceivers often infer the values of unknown attributes from evaluative expectancies. In 2 experiments, inferences about unknown attributes of a target made shortly after initial processing tended to be moderate, as perceivers presumably adjusted for the lack of directly relevant evidence. However, stronger inferences were drawn with the passage of time as memory of the absence of information faded. Expertise moderated this effect, as subjects highly knowledgeable of the target domain were much less likely than low or moderate knowledge subjects to draw extreme inferences over time. Memory-based inferences about unknown attributes were also found to be held with greater confidence than inferences made shortly after stimulus presentation.