There goes the neighbourhood: Contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation when reading aloud

There are currently two computational accounts of how the time to read pseudohomophones (like BRANE) and their nonword controls (like FRANE) varies with changes in context. In Reynolds and Besner's (2005) account, readers vary the breadth of lexical activation in response to changes in context. A competing account proposed by Kwantes and Marmurek (2007 Kwantes, P. and Marmurek, H. 2007. Controlling lexical contributions to the reading of pseudohomophones. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14: 373–378. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and independently by Perry, Ziegler, and Zorzi (2007 Perry, C., Ziegler, J. C. and Zorzi, M. 2007. Nested incremental modeling in the development of computational theories: The CDP+ model of reading aloud. Psychological Review, 114: 273–315. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has readers varying their response criterion in response to changes in context. The present work adjudicates between these two accounts by examining how the effect of neighbourhood density changes as a function of list context when reading pseudohomophones aloud. The results of an experiment and simulations from a leading computational model support the lexical breadth account, but are inconsistent with the response criterion account.     

Lexical stress,frequency, and stress neighbourhood effects in the early stages of Italian reading development

We examined the development of stress assignment in reading Italian aloud. We investigated frequency effects as a marker of the use of item-specific lexical knowledge in assigning stress together with stress dominance and stress neighbourhood (the number of words sharing both stress and ending) as markers of distributional information regarding properties of the lexicon extracted from spoken language. We tested second- and fourth-graders in a reading-aloud experiment including high- and low-frequency words and nonwords. Results show that despite the regularity of orthography–phonology mappings in Italian and the predominant use of phonological recoding procedures, item-specific lexical knowledge is also used, even by beginning readers. The frequency effect was significant and did not increase with age, while stress errors on low-frequency words decreased with increasing grade. Stress neighbourhood increasingly affected stress assignment on nonwords with older children. Taken together, our findings show that both item-specific knowledge and general information about stress distribution are relevant in children's reading, suggesting the simultaneous use of both lexical and sublexical information. Moreover, as the reading system develops, and knowledge about the relative distribution of stress neighbourhood increases, larger grain-size units are also exploited.     

Development of phonological and orthographic processing in reading aloud,in silent reading,and in spelling: a four-year longitudinal study

The development of phonological and orthographic processing was studied from the middle of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 4 (age 6; 6-10 years) using the effects of regularity and of lexicality in reading aloud and in spelling tasks, and using the effect of pseudohomophony in a silent reading task. In all the tasks, signs of reliance on phonological processing were found even when indicators of reliance on orthographic processing appeared. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine which early skills predict later reading achievement. Pseudoword and irregular word scores were used as measures for phonological and orthographic skills, respectively. Only middle of Grade 1 phonological reading skills accounted for independent variance in end of Grade 4 orthographic skills. Conversely, from the middle to the end of Grade 1, and from the end of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 4, both orthographic and phonological skills accounted for independent variance in later orthographic skills. In the prediction of phonological skills, only the unique contribution of earlier phonological skills was significant. Thus, phonological and orthographic processing appear to be reciprocally related, rather than independent components of written word recognition. However, very early reliance on the phonological procedure seems to be the bootstrapping mechanism for reading acquisition.     

Cognate effects in sentence context depend on word class,L2 proficiency,and task

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.     

Tracking the transition from sublexical to lexical processing: On the creation of orthographic and phonological lexical representations

Participants read aloud nonword letter strings, one at a time, which varied in the number of letters. The standard result is observed in two experiments; the time to begin reading aloud increases as letter length increases. This result is standardly understood as reflecting the operation of a serial, left-to-right translation of graphemes into phonemes. The novel result is that the effect of letter length is statistically eliminated by a small number of repetitions. This elimination suggests that these nonwords are no longer always being read aloud via a serial left-to-right sublexical process. Instead, the data are taken as evidence that new orthographic and phonological lexical entries have been created for these nonwords and are now read at least sometimes by recourse to the lexical route. Experiment 2 replicates the interaction between nonword letter length and repetition observed in Experiment 1 and also demonstrates that this interaction is not seen when participants merely classify the string as appearing in upper or lower case. Implications for existing dual-route models of reading aloud and Share's self-teaching hypothesis are discussed.     

On the role of set when reading aloud: A dissociation between prelexical and lexical processing

Two experiments investigated the role that mental set plays in reading aloud using the task choice procedure developed by Besner and Care [Besner, D., & Care, S. (2003). A paradigm for exploring what the mind does while deciding what it should do. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57, 311–320]. Subjects were presented with a word, and asked to either read it aloud or decide whether it appeared in upper/lower case. Task information, in the form of a brief auditory cue, appeared 750 ms before the word, or at the same time as the word. Experiment 1 yielded evidence consistent with the claim that at least some pre-lexical processing can be carried out in parallel with decoding the task cue (the 0 SOA condition yielded a smaller contrast effect than the long SOA condition). Experiment 2 provided evidence that such processing is restricted to pre-lexical levels (the word frequency effect was equivalent at the 0 SOA and the long SOA). These data suggest that a task set is a necessary preliminary to lexical processing when reading aloud.     

The shielding function of task rules in the context of task switching

There is increasing evidence that task rules help shield the response against distractor interference. Here, the authors investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying this assumed shielding function of task rules and how it is adjusted to changing task demands. In two experiments, participants switched between a noun categorization and an adjective categorization task. Target words were superimposed on distractor pictures. These pictures were always irrelevant and depicted either objects also used as target words in the noun task (noun distractors) or objects that were not part of the noun target-set but could be categorized according to the noun task (noun-related distractors). Results show that (a) on task repetitions shielding prevents interference from any distractors associated with a competing task; this is indicated by the lack of interference on adjective task repetitions; and (b) shielding is reduced on task switches. In the noun task, this reduction resulted in attenuated interference by noun-related distractors. In the adjective task, spatial distractors did not interfere despite the reduction. This result suggests that shielding is supported by a processing advantage for task-related information and not by distractor suppression.     

Development of parafoveal processing within and across words in reading: Evidence from the boundary paradigm

In this study we used the boundary paradigm to examine whether readers extract more parafoveal information within than across words. More specifically, we examined whether readers extract more parafoveal information from a compound word's second constituent than from the same word when it is the noun in an adjective–noun phrase (kummitustarina “ghost story” vs. lennokas tarina “vivid story”). We also examined whether the processing of compound word constituents is serial or parallel and how parafoveal word processing develops over the elementary school years. Participants were Finnish adults and 8-year-old second-, 10-year-old fourth-, and 12-year-old sixth-graders. The results showed that for all age groups more parafoveal information is extracted from the second constituent within compounds than from the noun in adjective–noun phrases. Moreover, for all age groups we found evidence for parallel processing of constituents within compounds, but only when the compounds were of high frequency. In sum, the present study shows that attentional allocation extends further to the right and is more simultaneous when words are linguistically and spatially unified, providing evidence that attention in text processing is flexible in nature.     

An incremental boundary study on parafoveal preprocessing in children reading aloud: Parafoveal masks overestimate the preview benefit

Parafoveal preprocessing is an important factor for efficient reading and, in eye-movement studies, is typically investigated by means of parafoveal masking: Valid previews are compared to instances in which masks prevent preprocessing. A long-held assumption was that parafoveal preprocessing, as assessed by this technique, only reflects facilitation (i.e., a preview benefit). Recent studies, however, suggested that the benefit estimate is inflated due to interference of the parafoveal masks, i.e., the masks inflict processing costs. With children from Grades 4 and 6, we administered the novel incremental priming technique. The technique manipulates the salience of the previews by systematically varying its perceptibility (i.e., by visually degrading the previews). This technique does not require a baseline condition, but makes it possible to determine whether a preview induces facilitation or interference. Our salience manipulation of valid previews revealed a preview benefit in the children of both Grades. For two commonly used parafoveal masks, we observed interference corroborating the notion that masks are not a proper baseline. With the novel incremental boundary technique, in contrast, one can achieve an accurate estimate of the preview benefit.     

Basic processes in reading aloud and colour naming: Towards a better understanding of the role of spatial attention

Whether or not lexical access from print requires spatial attention has been debated intensively for the last 30 years. Studies involving colour naming generally find evidence that “unattended” words are processed. In contrast, reading-based experiments do not find evidence of distractor processing. One theory ascribes the discrepancy to weaker attentional demands for colour identification. If colour naming does not capture all of a subject's attention, the remaining attentional resources can be deployed to process the distractor word. The present study combined exogenous spatial cueing with colour naming and reading aloud separately and found that colour naming is less sensitive to the validity of a spatial cue than is reading words aloud. Based on these results, we argue that colour naming studies do not effectively control attention so that no conclusions about unattended distractor processing can be drawn from them. Thus we reiterate the consistent conclusion drawn from reading aloud and lexical decision studies: There is no word identification without (spatial) attention.     

Testing the Role of Phonology in Reading: Focus on Sentence Processing

Most reading research investigating the role of phonology in word recognition has focused on studies employing an individual word as the sole stimulus. The bulk of such research has offered support for the phonological recoding hypothesis, the conjecture that access to a printed word’s meaning requires activation of the word’s phonology (i.e., meaning is not typically activated via orthography alone). A criticism of such studies is that by presenting participants with only a single word on each experimental trial (a nonecological manipulation), participants may alter their typical strategy of reading in such a way as to artificially favor the phonological recoding hypothesis. The present study avoided a focus on single words by requiring participants to read sentences and paragraphs for comprehension. Experiment 1 showed that, in reading a paragraph of connected sentences, eliminating a letter in a word that altered the phonology was more deleterious than eliminating a letter that did. Experiment 2 focused on the reading of each sentence itself rather than on the paragraph and provided additional control conditions. The results were similar to those of Experiment 1, consistent with the phonological recoding hypothesis.     

Task effects reveal cognitive flexibility responding to frequency and predictability: Evidence from eye movements in reading and proofreading

It is well-known that word frequency and predictability affect processing time. These effects change magnitude across tasks, but studies testing this use tasks with different response types (e.g., lexical decision, naming, and fixation time during reading; Schilling, Rayner, & Chumbley, 1998), preventing direct comparison. Recently, Kaakinen and Hyönä (2010) overcame this problem, comparing fixation times in reading for comprehension and proofreading, showing that the frequency effect was larger in proofreading than in reading. This result could be explained by readers exhibiting substantial cognitive flexibility, and qualitatively changing how they process words in the proofreading task in a way that magnifies effects of word frequency. Alternatively, readers may not change word processing so dramatically, and instead may perform more careful identification generally, increasing the magnitude of many word processing effects (e.g., both frequency and predictability). We tested these possibilities with two experiments: subjects read for comprehension and then proofread for spelling errors (letter transpositions) that produce nonwords (e.g., trcak for track as in Kaakinen & Hyönä) or that produce real but unintended words (e.g., trial for trail) to compare how the task changes these effects. Replicating Kaakinen and Hyönä, frequency effects increased during proofreading. However, predictability effects only increased when integration with the sentence context was necessary to detect errors (i.e., when spelling errors produced words that were inappropriate in the sentence; trial for trail). The results suggest that readers adopt sophisticated word processing strategies to accommodate task demands.     

Tracking the acquisition of orthographic skills in developing readers: masked priming effects

A masked priming procedure was used to explore developmental changes in the tuning of lexical word recognition processes. Lexical tuning was assessed by examining the degree of masked form priming and used two different types of prime-target lexical similarity: one letter different (e.g., rlay-->PLAY) and transposed letters (e.g., lpay-->PLAY). The performance of skilled adult readers was compared with that of developing readers in Grade 3. The same children were then tested again two years later, when they were in Grade 5. The skilled adult readers showed no form priming, indicating that their recognition mechanisms for these items had become finely tuned. In contrast, the Grade 3 readers showed substantial form priming effects for both measures of lexical similarity. When retested in Grade 5, the developing readers no longer showed significant one letter different priming, but transposed letter priming remained. In general, these results provide evidence for a transition from more broadly tuned to more finely tuned lexical recognition mechanisms and are interpreted in the context of models of word recognition.     

Becoming a written word: Eye movements reveal order of acquisition effects following incidental exposure to new words during silent reading

We know that from mid-childhood onwards most new words are learned implicitly via reading; however, most word learning studies have taught novel items explicitly. We examined incidental word learning during reading by focusing on the well-documented finding that words which are acquired early in life are processed more quickly than those acquired later. Novel words were embedded in meaningful sentences and were presented to adult readers early (day 1) or later (day 2) during a five-day exposure phase. At test adults read the novel words in semantically neutral sentences. Participants’ eye movements were monitored throughout exposure and test. Adults also completed a surprise memory test in which they had to match each novel word with its definition. Results showed a decrease in reading times for all novel words over exposure, and significantly longer total reading times at test for early than late novel words. Early-presented novel words were also remembered better in the offline test. Our results show that order of presentation influences processing time early in the course of acquiring a new word, consistent with partial and incremental growth in knowledge occurring as a function of an individual’s experience with each word.     

Inhibition of task set: Converging evidence from task choice in the voluntary task-switching paradigm

This study looked for evidence of task-set inhibition in a voluntary task-switching paradigm. Participants performed one of three tasks on a digit: parity (even or odd), size (less than or greater than 5), or distance (near or far from 5). On each trial, they were allowed to choose which task to perform, with encouragement to perform each task equally often overall and in a random sequence. The question was whether participants would avoid performing a task that they had recently switched away from (e.g., the task performed on trial n22), because the task set was still inhibited. Results confirmed that participants strongly avoided performing the n22 task (e.g., ABA) in favor of performing other tasks (e.g., ABC). This occurred both when participants were required to switch tasks every trial (Experiment 1) and when they were allowed to repeat tasks (Experiment 2). The results suggest that a task set is inhibited during switching to a new task, reducing the likelihood that this task will be selected in the near future.     

Sensitivity to lateral information on a perceptual word identification task in French third and fifth graders

This study aimed at examining sensitivity to lateral linguistic and nonlinguistic information in third and fifth grade readers. A word identification task with a threshold was used, and targets were displayed foveally with or without distractors. Sensitivity to lateral information was inferred from the deterioration of the rate of correct word identification when displayed with distractors. Results show that the two reader groups were sensitive to both right and left lateral information. The area of sensitivity to this information was more extended for the identification of easy words than difficult words. Examination of the detrimental effect of distractors suggests that in both third and fifth graders, the impact of lateral information on foveal processing is the result of a general distraction effect, but also of linguistic processing whose nature remains to be clarified.