Modulation of regularity and lexicality effects in reading aloud

We examined the question of whether the sizes of the regularity and lexicality effects in naming can be modulated as a function of filler type (nonwords or low-frequency exception words). The lexicality effect was larger in the exception word filler condition than in the nonword filler condition, but the size of the regularity effect was essentially unaffected by filler type. This pattern is at odds with what is generally assumed to be the predictions from dual-route theories of reading aloud. An attempt was next made to determine whether the dual-route cascaded model of Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, and Ziegler (2001) could possibly simulate this pattern when changes were introduced to each of the three parameters that affect the contribution of the nonlexical route. We discuss the implications of these results for the idea that reliance on the lexical and nonlexical routes is under strategic control.     

Speed of lexical and nonlexical processing in French: The case of the regularity effect

Words with irregular spelling-sound correspondences are read aloud more slowly than words with regular spelling-sound correspondences. This so-calledregularity effect is modulated by word frequency, with low-frequency words showing larger costs than do high-frequency words. Because French has more regular spelling-to-sound correspondences than English, we expected a different pattern in French than in English. This was indeed the case, since regularity effects were obtained for both high-and low-frequency words in French. We further showed that a French implementation of the dual-route cascaded model could not account for this pattern. In additional simulations, we investigated whether this failure was due to lexical processes being too fast (leaving little time for the nonlexical route to interfere) or nonlexical processes being too slow. The results showed that only speeding up the nonlexical route allowed the model to capture the data. This suggests that the delayed phonology assumption that characterizes nonlexical processing in the original model needs to be abandoned in a more regular orthography.     

Nonword reading: Comparing dual-route cascaded and connectionist dual-process models with human data

Two prominent dual-route computational models of reading aloud are the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model, and the connectionist dual-process plus (CDP+) model. While sharing similarly designed lexical routes, the two models differ greatly in their respective nonlexical route architecture, such that they often differ on nonword pronunciation. Neither model has been appropriately tested for nonword reading pronunciation accuracy to date. We argue that empirical data on the nonword reading pronunciation of people is the ideal benchmark for testing. Data were gathered from 45 Australian-English-speaking psychology undergraduates reading aloud 412 nonwords. To provide contrast between the models, the nonwords were chosen specifically because DRC and CDP+ disagree on their pronunciation. Both models failed to accurately match the experiment data, and both have deficiencies in nonword reading performance. However, the CDP+ model performed significantly worse than the DRC model. CDP++, the recent successor to CDP+, had improved performance over CDP+, but was also significantly worse than DRC. In addition to highlighting performance shortcomings in each model, the variety of nonword responses given by participants points to a need for models that can account for this variety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Reading aloud: when the effect of stimulus quality distinguishes between cascaded and thresholded components

A central feature of many formal accounts of reading aloud, and of Coltheart and colleagues dual-route cascaded model in particular, is that activation across various modules is cascaded. Evidence is reviewed that this assumption is problematic in a particular context, along with a solution that involves thresholding the output of the letter level to the nonlexical routine. Consideration of the known effects of repetition leads to the prediction of a three-way interaction between stimulus quality, repetition, and lexicality in which repetition and stimulus quality interact when reading aloud exception words, but produce additive effects when reading aloud nonwords. The result of such an experiment confirms this prediction, and appears consistent with the localized dual-route model. Implications for other accounts are briefly noted.     

Children's Production of Unfamiliar Word Sequences Is Predicted by Positional Variability and Latent Classes in a Large Sample of Child-Directed Speech

We explore whether children's willingness to produce unfamiliar sequences of words reflects their experience with similar lexical patterns. We asked children to repeat unfamiliar sequences that were identical to familiar phrases (e.g., A piece of toast) but for one word (e.g., a novel instantiation of A piece of X, like A piece of brick). We explore two predictions-motivated by findings in the statistical learning literature-that children are likely to have detected an opportunity to substitute alternative words into the final position of a four-word sequence if (a) it is difficult to predict the fourth word given the first three words and (b) the words observed in the final position are distributionally similar. Twenty-eight 2-year-olds and thirty-one 3-year-olds were significantly more likely to correctly repeat unfamiliar variants of patterns for which these properties held. The results illustrate how children's developing language is shaped by linguistic experience.     

Individual differences in the hemispheric specialization of dual route variables

The dual route model suggests that reading of letter strings can occur through both a lexical and a nonlexical route. Hemispheric specialization of these routes has also been posited, suggesting that the left hemisphere has both lexical and nonlexical routes while the right hemisphere has only a lexical route. However, some recent data conflict with this hemispheric dual route model, suggesting that both hemispheres may have access to both routes. The purpose of the present study was to investigate individual differences in the hemispheric specialization of these routes and to determine whether these group differences in their specialization might explain conflicts in the literature. The effect of four individual difference factors was explored: handedness, biological sex, menstrual stage (i.e., fluctuations in estrogen), and self-rated degree of masculinity (i.e., sexual attribution). We looked at the interaction of these individual differences with the following dual route variables: (i) string length, (ii) word frequency, (iii) regularity of grapheme-phoneme correspondences of words, and (iv) the interaction of frequency and regularity using a bilateral lexical decision task. We observed that sex, menstrual stage, and masculinity each affected hemispheric specialization of the dual route variables, but did so in different ways. We posit that both hemispheres have orthographical (lexical) access as well as phonological (nonlexical) access to words. Further, we suggest that the presence of phonological processing in the right hemisphere depends on available resources and the strategies used, which are subject to individual differences.     

Segmentation and speech perception in relation to reading skill: a developmental analysis

The present paper examines the processing of speech by dyslexic readers and compares their performance with that of age-matched (CA) and reading-ability-matched (RA) controls. In Experiment 1, subjects repeated single-syllable stimuli (words and nonwords) presented either in a favorable signal-to-noise ratio or with noise masking. Noise affected all subjects to the same extent. Dyslexic children performed as well as controls when repeating high-frequency words, but they had difficulty relative to CA-controls with low-frequency words and relative to both CA- and RA-controls when repeating nonwords. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects made auditory lexical decisions about the stimuli presented in Experiment 1. Dyslexics performed less well than CA-controls, gaining similar scores to RA-controls. Thus, their difficulty in repeating low-frequency words could be reinterpreted as a difficulty with nonword repetition. Taken together, these results suggest that dyslexics have difficulty with the nonlexical procedures (including phoneme segmentation) involved in verbal repetition. One consequence is that they take longer to consolidate "new" words; verbal memory and reading processes are also compromised.     

Better the DVL you know: acronyms reveal the contribution of familiarity to single-word reading

Current theories of reading are divided between dual-route accounts, which propose that separable processes subserve word recognition for orthographically regular and irregular strings, and connectionist models, which propose a single mechanism mapping form to meaning. These theories make distinct predictions about the processing of acronyms, which can be orthographically illegal and yet familiar, as compared with the processing of pseudowords, which are regular but unfamiliar. This study examined whether acronyms are processed like pseudowords and words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as subjects viewed familiar and unfamiliar acronyms, words, pseudowords, illegal strings, and--as the targets of the substantive behavioral task--proper names. Familiar acronyms elicited repetition effects on the N400 component, a functionally specific index of semantic activation processes; repetition effects for familiar acronyms were similar in magnitude, timing, and scalp distribution to those for words and pseudowords. The similarity of the brain response to familiar--but--illegal and unfamiliar--but--legal classes of stimuli is inconsistent with predictions of dual-route models of reading.     

Switch costs when reading aloud words and nonwords: Evidence for shifting route emphasis?

Reynolds and Besner (2005) examined contextual control over the use of lexical and nonlexical routes by requiring participants to alternate between reading pairs of low-frequency exception words and pairs of nonwords. Their main finding was that latencies for both words (e.g., wad) and nonwords (e.g., flad) were slower when the immediately preceding trial involved the opposite item type rather than the same item type (a switch cost). The authors interpreted this result as evidence that under certain circumstances, readers have the ability to shift emphasis between their lexical and nonlexical routes. The present research shows that these results can be replicated using Reynolds and Besner’s items; however, the switch cost for words, but not for nonwords, disappears when more easily named nonwords are used. This result suggests that Reynolds and Besner’s results were likely due to something other than shifting route emphasis.     

Evidence for linguistic deficit in nonlexical processing in reading. A study of a Spanish-speaking patient

Previous studies have shown that in the so-called opaque languages (those in which spelling does not correspond to pronunciation), there are relatively independent routes for lexical and nonlexical processing, that is, for words and nonwords, both in spoken and in written language. On the other hand, in the so-called transparent languages (those in which pronunciation corresponds to written forms), empirical evidence is scarcer. In this study of a neurological patient (parieto-temporal lesion), speaker of a transparent language (Spanish) showing a specific deficit in nonlexical reading processing, linguistic analysis for words was relatively preserved. This finding suggests the use of various routes in the processing of transparent languages.     

Accurate reading by nonlexical means: A case study

Accurate reading of irregular words is generally assumed to require intact lexical reading mechanisms. A nonlexical mechanism is usually deemed insufficient for this type of stimulus processing. The maximum level of accuracy attainable by nonlexical means, however, has not been adequately evaluated. We now describe a patient with acquired dyslexia due to impaired lexical reading mechanisms who retained the ability to read irregular words. The patient's poor performance on tasks requiring lexical decision and access to word meaning provided evidence that his lexical mechanisms were impaired. Nevertheless, errors on irregular words became apparent only with special tests that circumvented the patient's ability to use his intact speaking vocabulary to ensure that reading responses were words. The results demonstrate that relatively accurate reading of irregular words is possible despite damage to lexical mechanisms and that this can be achieved by filtering potential responses through the speaking vocabulary.     

Cross-Language Translation Priming Asymmetry with Chinese-English Bilinguals: A Test of the Sense Model

The present study aimed to test the Sense Model of cross-linguistic masked translation priming asymmetry, proposed by Finkbeiner et al. (J Mem Lang 51:1–22, 2004), by manipulating the number of senses that bilingual participants associated with words from both languages. Three lexical decision experiments were conducted with Chinese-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, polysemous L2 words and their L1 Chinese single-sense translation equivalents were selected as primes and targets. In Experiment 2, single-sense L1 words and their L2 translation equivalents with polysemous senses severed as primes and targets. We found translation priming effects in the L1–L2 direction, but not in the L2–L1 direction. In Experiment 3, presentation time of the L2 priming stimulus was prolonged, and significant translation priming effects were observed in the L2–L1 direction. These findings suggest that the Sense Model does not adequately explain cross-language translation priming asymmetry. The sense numbers of primes and targets, as well as the activation proportion of these senses between them, were possibly not the primary reason for cross-language translation priming asymmetry. The revised hierarchical model (Kroll and Stewart in J Mem Lang 33:149–174, 1994) and the BIA+ model (Dijkstra and van Heuven in Bilingualism Lang Cognit 5:175–197, 2002) better explain the cross-language translation priming asymmetry we found.     

Lexical decision in children: sublexical processing or lexical search?

Length effects in the lexical decision latencies of children might indicate that children rely on sublexical processing and essentially approach the task as a naming task. We examined this possibility by means of the effects of neighbourhood size and articulatory suppression on lexical decision performance. Sixty-six beginning and 62 advanced readers performed a lexical decision task in a standard, articulatory suppression, or tapping condition. We found length effects on words and nonwords in the children's lexical decisions. However, the effects of neighbourhood size were similar to those reported for adult lexical decisions, rather than the effects previously found in children's naming. In addition, no effect was found of articulatory suppression. Both findings suggest that, despite clear length effects, children do not adopt a naming task approach but, like adults, base lexical decisions mainly on a lexical search. These results pose a challenge for several computational models of reading.     

Lexical entries and rules of language: a multidisciplinary study of German inflection

Following much work in linguistic theory, it is hypothesized that the language faculty has a modular structure and consists of two basic components, a lexicon of (structured) entries and a computational system of combinatorial operations to form larger linguistic expressions from lexical entries. This target article provides evidence for the dual nature of the language faculty by describing recent results of a multidisciplinary investigation of German inflection. We have examined: (1) its linguistic representation, focussing on noun plurals and verb inflection (participles), (2) processes involved in the way adults produce and comprehend inflected words, (3) brain potentials generated during the processing of inflected words, and (4) the way children acquire and use inflection. It will be shown that the evidence from all these sources converges and supports the distinction between lexical entries and combinatorial operations. Our experimental results indicate that adults have access to two distinct processing routes, one accessing (irregularly) inflected entries from the mental lexicon and another involving morphological decomposition of (regularly) inflected words into stem + affix representations. These two processing routes correspond to the dual structure of the linguistic system. Results from event-related potentials confirm this linguistic distinction at the level of brain structures. In children's language, we have also found these two processes to be clearly dissociated; regular and irregular inflection are used under different circumstances, and the constraints under which children apply them are identical to those of the adult linguistic system. Our findings will be explained in terms of a linguistic model that maintains the distinction between the lexicon and the computational system but replaces the traditional view of the lexicon as a simple list of idiosyncrasies with the notion of internally structured lexical representations.     

Spoken word recognition and lexical representation in very young children

Although children's knowledge of the sound patterns of words has been a focus of debate for many years, little is known about the lexical representations very young children use in word recognition. In particular, researchers have questioned the degree of specificity encoded in early lexical representations. The current study addressed this issue by presenting 18-23-month-olds with object labels that were either correctly pronounced, or mispronounced. Mispronunciations involved replacement of one segment with a similar segment, as in 'baby-vaby'. Children heard sentences containing these words while viewing two pictures, one of which was the referent of the sentence. Analyses of children's eye movements showed that children recognized the spoken words in both conditions, but that recognition was significantly poorer when words were mispronounced. The effects of mispronunciation on recognition were unrelated to age or to spoken vocabulary size. The results suggest that children's representations of familiar words are phonetically well-specified, and that this specification may not be a consequence of the need to differentiate similar words in production.     

Masked priming of words and nonwords in a naming task: Further evidence for a nonlexical basis for priming

Masked priming effects in word identification tasks such as lexical decision and word naming have been attributed to a lexical mechanism whereby the masked prime opens a lexical entry corresponding to the target word. Two experiments are reported in which masked repetition priming effects of similar magnitude were obtained with word and nonword targets in a naming task. Masked orthographic priming was more stable for word than for nonword targets, although morphological primes produced no advantage beyond that achieved by matched orthographic primes. These results, taken together with the recent finding that repetition priming of nonwords can be obtained in the lexical decision task, support the view that masked priming of words and nonwords has a nonlexical component. We suggest that masked primes can enhance target identification by contributing to the construction of an orthographic or a phonological representation of the target, regardless of the target's lexical status.     

Dual-route models of print to sound: Still a good horse race

Summary Dual-route models assume that pronunciations are generated along both a lexical route and a nonlexical route. The lexical route has been characterized as more automatic. Accordingly, if the naming task is paired with a concurrent task, then the nonlexical route should be more susceptible to interference than the lexical pathway. A relative slowing of the nonlexical route should eliminate the regularity effect obtained with low-frequency words while significantly enhancing the small frequency effect obtained with regular words. These predictions were confirmed. Exception words were actually named 39 ms faster under high load. The results are inconsistent with any straightforward application of single-route models.     

Deep dysphasia: analysis of a rare form of repetition disorder

"Deep dysphasia" is the parallel in repetition to the reading impairment deep dyslexia. Our patient, S.M., showed part of speech, word/nonword, and concreteness effects in repetition, and he made semantic errors, but his oral reading was relatively spared. Further testing indicated that S.M. did not have difficulty perceiving spoken stimuli or deciding their lexical status, but he was deficient at semantically processing spoken words. Moreover, his phonemic memory was severely impaired. We argue that the routes for repetition (lexical and nonlexical) that function without semantic mediation were defective and that deficits in phonemic memory further diminished their effectiveness, since initial phonological encoding of spoken words was not available to guide the output stages of phonological processing. In addition, the semantically mediated route for repetition was unreliable because semantic processing was faulty and S.M. could not accurately label concepts.     

Morphological knowledge as revealed in children's spelling accuracy and reports of spelling strategies

The goal of the current research was to assess whether children can make strategic use of morphological relations among words to spell. French-speaking children in Grade 4 spelled three word types: (a) phonological words that had regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (b) morphological words that had silent consonant endings for which a derivative revealed the silent ending, and (c) lexical words that had silent consonant endings for which no familiar derivative revealed the ending. Children were also asked to provide immediate retrospective reports of the strategies used to spell each word. Two experiments (Ns = 46 and 39) were conducted. As expected, children in Grade 4 spelled phonological words more accurately than they did words with silent consonant endings. In addition, children spelled morphological words more accurately than they did lexical words. Reports of using retrieval were associated with accurate performance across word types. Importantly, reports of using morphological strategies to spell morphological words were associated with a similar level of accuracy, as were reports of using retrieval. Even though children reported using a phonological strategy frequently across all word types, this strategy was associated with accurate performance only for spelling phonological words. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 with another set of stimuli and also showed that children's morphological awareness predicted their spelling accuracy for morphological words as well as the reported frequency of morphological strategy use. In sum, the findings revealed that most children showed evidence of adaptive strategy use.     

Naming cAsE aLtErNaTeD words

A dual-route approach was used as an initial framework to examine the relation between presentation format and lexical processing in a naming task. In Experiments 1 and 3, words were presented in lowercase versus case-alternated format. Presentation format interacted with word frequency and regularity: For irregular words (e.g., pint), case alternation was additive with frequency, whereas for regular words (e.g., mint), case alternation and frequency interacted. Experiment 2 dissociated the locus of case-alternation effects from those of stimulus intensity. Stimulus intensity was additive with frequency and regularity, suggesting that whereas stimulus intensity affects encoding, case alternation affects lexical processing at a postencoding stage in the word recognition system. It was concluded that a dual-route approach provides a suggestive but incomplete account of how case alternation influences lexical processing. As an alternative to a dual-route approach, we show that the present results can be addressed and successfully simulated using an implemented version of Norris's (1994) multilevel model.