Parafoveal processing within and between words

Parafoveal preview was examined within and between words in two eye movement experiments. In Experiment 1, unspaced and spaced English compound words were used (e.g., basketball, tennis ball). Prior to fixating the second lexeme, either a correct or a partial parafoveal preview (e.g., ball or badk) was provided using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). There was a larger effect of parafoveal preview on unspaced compound words than on spaced compound words. However, the parafoveal preview effect on spaced compound words was larger than would be predicted on the basis of prior research. Experiment 2 examined whether this large effect was due to spaced compounds forming a larger linguistic unit by pairing spaced compounds with nonlexicalized adjective–noun pairs. There were no significant interactions between item type and parafoveal preview, suggesting that it is the syntactic predictability of the noun that is driving the large preview effect.     

Modality dependency of familiarity ratings of Japanese words

Familiarity ratings for a large number of aurally and visually presented Japanese words were measured for 11 subjects, in order to investigate the modality dependency of familiarity. The correlation coefficient between auditory and visual ratings was .808, which is lower than that observed for English words, suggesting that a substantial portion of the mental lexicon is modality dependent. It was shown that the modality dependency is greater for low-familiarity words than it is for medium- or high-familiarity words. This difference between the low- and the medium- or high-familiarity words has a relationship to orthography. That is, the dependency is larger in words consisting only ofkanji, which may have multiple pronunciations and usually represent meaning, than it is in words consisting only ofhiragana or katakana, which have a single pronunciation and usually do not represent meaning. These results indicate that the idiosyncratic characteristics of Japanese orthography contribute to the modality dependency.     

Rhyme decisions to spoken words and nonwords

Lexical effects in auditory rhyme-decision performance were examined in three experiments. Experiment 1 showed reliable lexical involvement: rhyme-monitoring responses to words were faster than rhyme-monitoring responses to nonwords; and decisions were faster in response to high-frequency as opposed to low-frequency words. Experiments 2 and 3 tested for lexical influences in the rejection of three types of nonrhyming item: words, nonwords with rhyming lexical neighbors (e.g.,jop after the cuerob), and nonwords with no rhyming lexical neighbor (e.g.,vop afterrob). Words were rejected more rapidly than nonwords, and there were reliable differences in the speed and accuracy of rejection of the two types of nonword. The advantage for words over nonwords was replicated for positive rhyme decisions. However, there were no differences in the speed of acceptance, as rhymes, of the two types of nonword. The implications of these results for interactive and autonomous models of spoken word recognition are discussed. It is concluded that the differences in rejection of nonrhyming nonwords are due to the operation of a guessing strategy.     

Age of acquisition and imageability ratings for a large set of words, including verbs and function words

Age of acquisition and imageability ratings were collected for 2,645 words, including 892 verbs and 213 function words. Words that were ambiguous as to grammatical category were disambiguated: Verbs were shown in their infinitival form, and nouns (where appropriate) were preceded by the indefinite article (such asto crack anda crack). Subjects were speakers of British English selected from a wide age range, so that differences in the responses across age groups could be compared. Within the subset of early acquired noun/verb homonyms, the verb forms were rated as later acquired than the nouns, and the verb homonyms of high-image ability nouns were rated as significantly less imageable than their noun counterparts. A small number of words received significantly earlier or later age of acquisition ratings when the 20–40 years and 50–80 years age groups were compared. These tend to comprise words that have come to be used more frequently in recent years (either through technological advances or social change), or those that have fallen out of common usage. Regression analyses showed that although word length, familiarity, and concreteness make independent contributions to the age of acquisition measure, frequency and imageability are the most important predictors of rated age of acquisition.     

In search of meaning: Semantic effects on past-tense inflection

Within single-mechanism connectionist models of inflectional morphology, generating the past-tense form of a verb depends upon the interaction of semantic and phonological representations, with semantic information being particularly important for irregular or exception verbs. We assessed this hypothesis in two experiments requiring normal speakers to produce the past tense from a verb stem that takes a regular or exceptional past tense. Experiment 1 revealed significant latency advantages for high- over low-imageability words for both regular verbs (e.g., “lunged” faster than “loved”) and exception items (e.g., “drank” faster than “dealt”); but critically, this effect was significantly larger for exceptions than for regulars. Experiment 2 employed a semantic priming paradigm where participants inflected verb stems (e.g., sit) preceded by related (e.g., chair) or unrelated primes (e.g., jug) and revealed a priming effect in accuracy that was confined to the exception items. Our results are consistent with predictions from single-mechanism connectionist models of inflectional morphology and converge with findings from neurological patients and studies of reading aloud.     

Word frequency as a cue for identifying function words in infancy

While content words (e.g., ‘dog’) tend to carry meaning, function words (e.g., ‘the’) mainly serve syntactic purposes. Here, we ask whether 17-month old infants can use one language–universal cue to identify function word candidates: their high frequency of occurrence. In Experiment 1, infants listened to a series of short, naturally recorded sentences in a foreign language (i.e., in French). In these sentences, two determiners appeared much more frequently than any content word. Following this, infants were presented with a visual object, and simultaneously with a word pair composed of a determiner and a noun. Results showed that infants associated the object more strongly with the infrequent noun than with the frequent determiner. That is, when presented with both the old object and a novel object, infants were more likely to orient towards the old object when hearing a label with a new determiner and the old noun compared to a label with a new noun and the old determiner. In Experiment 2, infants were tested using the same procedure as in Experiment 1, but without the initial exposure to French sentences. Under these conditions, infants did not preferentially associate the object with nouns, suggesting that the preferential association between nouns and objects does not result from specific acoustic or phonological properties. In line with various biases and heuristics involved in acquiring content words, we provide the first direct evidence that infants can use distributional cues, especially the high frequency of occurrence, to identify potential function words.     

Context effects of pictures and words in naming objects, reading words, and generating simple phrases

In five language production experiments it was examined which aspects of words are activated in memory by context pictures and words. Context pictures yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects on response times when participants generated gender-marked noun phrases in response to written words (Experiment 1A). However, pictures yielded no such effects when participants simply read aloud the noun phrases (Experiment 2). Moreover, pictures yielded a gender congruency effect in generating gender-marked noun phrases in response to the written words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that context pictures activate lemmas (i.e., representations of syntactic properties), which leads to effects only when lemmas are needed to generate a response (i.e., in Experiments 1A, 3A, and 3B, but not in Experiment 2). Context words yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects in picture naming (Experiment 1B). Moreover, words yielded Stroop-like but no semantic effects in reading nouns (Experiment 4) and in generating noun phrases (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that context words activate the lemmas and forms of their names, which leads to semantic effects when lemmas are required for responding (Experiment 1B) but not when only the forms are required (Experiment 4). WEAVER++ simulations of the results are presented.     

Context effects of pictures and words in naming objects,reading words,and generating simple phrases

In five language production experiments it was examined which aspects of words are activated in memory by context pictures and words. Context pictures yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects on response times when participants generated gender-marked noun phrases in response to written words (Experiment 1A). However, pictures yielded no such effects when participants simply read aloud the noun phrases (Experiment 2). Moreover, pictures yielded a gender congruency effect in generating gender-marked noun phrases in response to the written words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that context pictures activate lemmas (i.e., representations of syntactic properties), which leads to effects only when lemmas are needed to generate a response (i.e., in Experiments 1A, 3A, and 3B, but not in Experiment 2). Context words yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects in picture naming (Experiment 1B). Moreover, words yielded Stroop-like but no semantic effects in reading nouns (Experiment 4) and in generating noun phrases (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that context words activate the lemmas and forms of their names, which leads to semantic effects when lemmas are required for responding (Experiment 1B) but not when only the forms are required (Experiment 4). WEAVER++ simulations of the results are presented.     

Infants use known verbs to learn novel nouns: Evidence from 15- and 19-month-olds

Fluent speakers’ representations of verbs include semantic knowledge about the nouns that can serve as their arguments. These “selectional restrictions” of a verb can in principle be recruited to learn the meaning of a novel noun. For example, the sentence He ate the carambola licenses the inference that carambola refers to something edible. We ask whether 15- and 19-month-old infants can recruit their nascent verb lexicon to identify the referents of novel nouns that appear as the verbs’ subjects. We compared infants’ interpretation of a novel noun (e.g., the dax) in two conditions: one in which dax is presented as the subject of animate-selecting construction (e.g., The dax is crying), and the other in which dax is the subject of an animacy-neutral construction (e.g., The dax is right here). Results indicate that by 19 months, infants use their representations of known verbs to inform the meaning of a novel noun that appears as its argument.     

Effects of relative embodiment in lexical and semantic processing of verbs

Research examining semantic richness effects in visual word recognition has shown that multiple dimensions of meaning are activated in the process of word recognition (e.g., Yap et al., 2012). This research has, however, been limited to nouns. In the present research we extended the semantic richness approach to verb stimuli in order to investigate how verb meanings are represented. We characterized a dimension of relative embodiment for verbs, based on the bodily sense described by Borghi and Cimatti (2010), and collected ratings on that dimension for 687 English verbs. The relative embodiment ratings revealed that bodily experience was judged to be more important to the meanings of some verbs (e.g., dance, breathe) than to others (e.g., evaporate, expect). We then tested the effects of relative embodiment and imageability on verb processing in lexical decision (Experiment 1), action picture naming (Experiment 2), and syntactic classification (Experiment 3). In all three experiments results showed facilitatory effects of relative embodiment, but not imageability: latencies were faster for relatively more embodied verbs, even after several other lexical variables were controlled. The results suggest that relative embodiment is an important aspect of verb meaning, and that the semantic richness approach holds promise as a strategy for investigating other aspects of verb meaning.     

In search of meaning: semantic effects on past-tense inflection

Within single-mechanism connectionist models of inflectional morphology, generating the past-tense form of a verb depends upon the interaction of semantic and phonological representations, with semantic information being particularly important for irregular or exception verbs. We assessed this hypothesis in two experiments requiring normal speakers to produce the past tense from a verb stem that takes a regular or exceptional past tense. Experiment 1 revealed significant latency advantages for high- over low-imageability words for both regular verbs (e.g., "lunged" faster than "loved") and exception items (e.g., "drank" faster than "dealt"); but critically, this effect was significantly larger for exceptions than for regulars. Experiment 2 employed a semantic priming paradigm where participants inflected verb stems (e.g., sit) preceded by related (e.g., chair) or unrelated primes (e.g., jug) and revealed a priming effect in accuracy that was confined to the exception items. Our results are consistent with predictions from single-mechanism connectionist models of inflectional morphology and converge with findings from neurological patients and studies of reading aloud.     

The role of grammatical class on word recognition

The double dissociation between noun and verb processing, well documented in the neuropsychological literature, has not been supported in imaging studies. Recent imaging studies, in fact, suggest that once confounding with semantics is eliminated, grammatical class effects only emerge as a consequence of building frames. Here we assess this hypothesis behaviorally in two visual word recognition experiments. In Experiment 1, participants made lexical decisions on verb targets. We manipulated the grammatical class of the prime words (either nouns or verbs and always introduced in a minimal phrasal context, i.e., “the + N” or “to + V”), and their semantic similarity to a target (related vs. unrelated). We found reliable effects of grammatical class, and no interaction with semantic similarity. Experiment 2 further explored this grammatical class effect, using verb targets preceded by semantically unrelated verb vs. noun primes. In one condition, prime words were presented as bare words; in the other, they were presented in the minimal phrasal context used in Experiment 1. Grammatical class effects only arose in the latter but not in the former condition thus providing evidence that word recognition does not recruit grammatical class information unless it is provided to the system.     

Children reading spoken words: interactions between vocabulary and orthographic expectancy

There is an established association between children's oral vocabulary and their word reading but its basis is not well understood. Here, we present evidence from eye movements for a novel mechanism underlying this association. Two groups of 18 Grade 4 children received oral vocabulary training on one set of 16 novel words (e.g., ‘nesh’, ‘coib’), but no training on another set. The words were assigned spellings that were either predictable from phonology (e.g., nesh) or unpredictable (e.g., koyb). These were subsequently shown in print, embedded in sentences. Reading times were shorter for orally familiar than unfamiliar items, and for words with predictable than unpredictable spellings but, importantly, there was an interaction between the two: children demonstrated a larger benefit of oral familiarity for predictable than for unpredictable items. These findings indicate that children form initial orthographic expectations about spoken words before first seeing them in print. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/jvpJwpKMM3E .     

Automatic access of the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations of knowledge-based processing

Five experiments are described on the processing of ambiguous words in sentences. Two classes of ambiguous words (noun-noun and noun-verb) and two types of context (priming and nonpriming) were investigated using a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) priming paradigm. Noun-noun ambiguities have two semantically unrelated readings that are nouns (e.g., PEN, ORGAN); noun-verb ambiguities have both noun and verb readings that are unrelated (e.g., TIRE, WATCH). Priming contexts contain a word highly semantically or associatively related to one meaning of the ambiguous word; nonpriming contexts favor one meaning of the word through other types of information (e.g., syntactic or pragmatic). In nonpriming contexts, subjects consistently access multiple meanings of words and select one reading within 200 msec. Lexical priming differentially affects the processing of subsequent noun-noun and noun-verb ambiguities, yielding selective access of meaning only in the former case. The results suggest that meaning access is an automatic process which is unaffected by knowledge-based (“top-down”) processing. Whether selective or multiple access of meaning is observed largely depends on the structure of the ambiguous word, not the nature of the context.     

图文横排促进低熟悉词汇再认:基于8岁儿童和成人证据

图文信息广泛存在于书面材料中,但是图文材料相对呈现位置和熟悉性如何交互影响信息加工效率,及其认知机制尚不清楚。本研究基于认知负荷理论框架,采用学习-再认范式,结合学习者的认知能力（注意、工作记忆、识字量等）,考察图文材料呈现位置（横排/竖排）和熟悉性（高/低）对32名儿童（7.89 ±0.30岁）和32名成人（22.67 ±3.48岁）词汇再认的影响。结果显示：（1）总体上,低熟悉性词汇在图文横排呈现时再认正确率较高,但高熟悉性词汇不受位置影响;（2）儿童对高熟悉性词汇的再认正确率较高,但成人对低熟悉性词汇的再认正确率较高;（3）儿童识字量越大,词汇再认速度越快;成人注意力、工作记忆广度、识字量成绩越高,再认正确率越高。结果表明,无论对儿童还是成人,外在负荷（呈现位置）和内在负荷（熟悉性）之间均存在交互作用,即外在负荷显著影响高内在负荷信息的加工,但对低内在负荷信息的加工影响较弱,验证了认知负荷理论。本研究成果为不同难度水平的教材排版设计和词汇识别学习提供了科学依据。     

Presenting two incongruent color words on a single trial does not alter Stroop interference

Two experiments showed that having two incongruent words present on a single Stroop trial (e.g., bothred andgreen in blue, say “blue”) did not alter interference relative to having only one incongruent word. This was true whether the two incongruent words were presented successively at several stimulus onset asynchronies (Experiment 1) or simultaneously in adjacent positions (Experiment 2). We argue that the first word captures attention and “locks out” others, preventing additional interference.     

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).     

The modulation of semantic transparency on the recognition memory for two-character Chinese words

This study demonstrated that semantic transparency as a linguistic property modulates the recognition memory for two-character Chinese words, with opaque words (i.e., words whose meanings cannot be derived from constituent characters—e.g., “光[/guang/, light]棍[/gun/, stick]”, bachelor) remembered better than transparent words (i.e., words whose meanings can be derived from constituent characters—e.g., “茶[/cha/, tea]杯[/bei/, cup]”, teacup). In Experiment 1, the participants made lexical decisions on transparent words, opaque words, and nonwords in the study and then engaged in an old/new recognition test. Experiment 2 employed a concreteness judgment as the encoding task to ensure equivalent semantic processing for opaque and transparent words. In Experiment 3, the neighborhood size of the two-character words was manipulated together with their semantic transparency. In all three experiments, opaque words were found to be better remembered than transparent words. We concluded that the conceptual incongruence between the meanings of a whole word and its constituent characters made opaque words more distinctive and, hence, better remembered than transparent words.     

Interference of spoken word recognition through phonological priming from visual objects and printed words

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the influence of preexposure to pictures and printed words on the speed of spoken word recognition. Targets for auditory lexical decision were spoken Dutch words and nonwords, presented in isolation (Experiments 1 and 2) or after a short phrase (Experiment 3). Auditory stimuli were preceded by primes, which were pictures (Experiments 1 and 3) or those pictures’ printed names (Experiment 2). Prime–target pairs were phonologically onset related (e.g., pijl–pijn, arrow–pain), were from the same semantic category (e.g., pijl–zwaard, arrow–sword), or were unrelated on both dimensions. Phonological interference and semantic facilitation were observed in all experiments. Priming magnitude was similar for pictures and printed words and did not vary with picture viewing time or number of pictures in the display (either one or four). These effects arose even though participants were not explicitly instructed to name the pictures and where strategic naming would interfere with lexical decision making. This suggests that, by default, processing of related pictures and printed words influences how quickly we recognize spoken words.