A reversed word length effect in coordinating the preparation and articulation of words in speaking

Speakers tend to prepare their nouns immediately before saying them, rather than preparing them further in advance. To test the limits of this last-second preparation, speakers were asked to name object pairs without pausing between names. There was not enough time to prepare the second name while articulating the first, so the speakers’ delay in starting to say the first name was based on the amount of time available to prepare the second name during speech. Before speaking, they spent more time preparing a second name (e.g., carrot) when the first name was monosyllabic (e.g., wig) rather than multisyllabic (e.g., windmill ). When additional words intervened between names, the length of the first name became less important and speech began earlier. Preparation differences were reflected in speech latencies, durations, and eye movements. The results suggest that speakers are sensitive to the length of prepared words and the time needed for preparing subsequent words. They can use this information to increase fluency while minimizing word buffering.     

中文词间词和词内词预视加工的差异：词间阴影的作用

为了考察词语的属性特征对预视加工的影响, 实验操纵注视字与预视字是否属于一个语言单元, 利用眼动轨迹记录法并结合边界范式以探讨其对预视效应的影响。此外, 考察了词边界信息对词间词和词内词预视加工的影响。结果显示, 词内词的预视效应大于词间词, 词间阴影、非词阴影条件下的预视效应和正常条件之间没有差异。说明阴影提供的词边界对词间词和词内词的预视加工无影响, 支持词切分和词汇识别模型, 即词切分和词汇识别是同时进行的。     

Comparing word fragment completion and cued recall with letter cues

Cued recall with word stems as cues and fragment completion rely on different types of letter cues and also differ in the explicit-implicit nature of the retrieval orientation. Despite these differences, variables effective in one task may be effective in the other because both rely on letter cues. Two variables known to affect cued recall were manipulated: Lexical set size (number of words that fit the letter cue) and meaning set size (number of associates generated to the studied words). Across four experiments, subjects in each task were less likely to recover targets from larger lexical sets. However, meaning set size affected cued recall but not fragment completion. These results indicate that fragment completion and letter-cued recall are based on lexical search but that cued recall also involves a semantic search component. Furthermore, type of retrieval cue had a greater effect than type of retrieval orientation.     

Relation between self-paced and synchronized movement in persons with mental retardation

The relation between self-paced and synchronized tapping in 64 persons with mental retardation whose mental ages ranged from 2 to 11 years and chronological ages from 13 to 23 years was investigated. In a self-paced tapping task no stimulus was presented, and subjects' easy and spontaneous tapping was measured. In a synchronized tapping task their synchronous tapping with an auditory stimulus present at a quick or slow tempo was measured. Under both tempo conditions, the lower the subjects' mental age, the larger the errors in the intertap interval they made. The subjects of low mental age showed significantly larger errors in the intertap interval in the Slow than in the Quick Tempo condition and tended to tap at a rate near the self-paced tapping. These results may suggest that ability to adjust one's self pace is one of the key factors in the development of motor synchronization in persons with mental retardation.     

Recognition of affixed words and the word frequency effect

Three experiments are reported in which the word frequency effect is used as a diagnostic for determining whether affixed words coming from the same stem are stored together or separately in the lexicon. Prefixed words are examined in the first experiment, inflected words in the second and third. In the first two experiments, two types of word are compared where the words in each condition are matched on surface or presented frequency but are varied on the frequency of their stems or base frequency. It is found that lexical decision times are influenced by base frequency, thus indicating that words related by affixation are stored together in the lexicon. The third experiment, however, demonstrates that when base frequency is held constant and surface frequency is varied, lexical decision times are influenced by surface frequency. The results are accounted for by a model of word recognition whereby frequency has its effect at two different stages of the recognition process.     

Relation between pronunciation and recognition of printed words in deep and shallow orthographies

The processes responsible for recognition and pronunciation of printed words were studied by means of lexical decision and naming experiments. Two languages were examined: English, which has a complex and deep correspondence between spelling and speech, and Serbo-Croatian, in which the correspondence is simple and direct. It was hypothesized that reliance on articulatory coding (instead of on mediation by the internal lexicon) would be greater for Serbo-Croatian because its shallow orthography would allow more efficient use of spelling-to-speech correspondences. Each target stimulus was preceded by a word that was either related or unrelated semantically. Semantic priming of target words facilitated performance in both lexical decision and naming for English, results suggesting an influence of the internal lexicon on both processes. In contrast, semantic priming facilitated only lexical decision for Serbo-Croatian, which suggests that naming, at least in that language, is not strongly influenced by the internal lexicon. Further, in Serbo-Croatian, lexical decision and naming latencies were correlated when both tasks were not semantically primed and were uncorrelated when either or both tasks received semantic priming. This suggested that articulatory coding is used in lexical decision, at least under conditions in which contextual semantic facilitation is absent. In contrast, in English, lexical decision and naming were correlated uniformly whether semantic facilitation was present or not, which, when considered with the effect of semantic facilitation on naming, suggested a stronger influence of the internal lexicon on both recognition and pronunciation.     

The effects of root frequency, word frequency, and length on the processing of prefixed English words during reading

Two experiments were performed to investigate the roles of root morpheme frequency and word frequency in the encoding of prefixed words in sentence context. Two alternative words, which were equated on other indices but differed with respect to either root morpheme frequency or word frequency, were embedded in the same sentence frame. In Experiment 1, there was a significant root morpheme frequency effect on gaze duration but only a marginal word frequency effect. Post hoc analyses indicated that word length influenced both effects, with word frequency effects predominating for shorter words and root morpheme effects predominating for longer words. In Experiment 2, word length was also manipulated. There was a significant root frequency effect for longer prefixed words and a significant word frequency effect for shorter prefixed words. The results were best explained by a dual-route model (with competing whole-word access and compositional routes), in which increasing word length inhibited the whole-word process, relative to the compositional route.     

Immediate and delayed effects of word frequency and word length on eye movements in reading: a reversed delayed effect of word length

Three experiments examined the effects in sentence reading of varying the frequency and length of an adjective on (a) fixations on the adjective and (b) fixations on the following noun. The gaze duration on the adjective was longer for low frequency than for high frequency adjectives and longer for long adjectives than for short adjectives. This contrasted with the spillover effects: Gaze durations on the noun were longer when adjectives were low frequency but were actually shorter when the adjectives were long. The latter effect, which seems anomalous, can be explained by three mechanisms: (a) Fixations on the noun are less optimal after short adjectives because of less optimal targeting; (b) shorter adjectives are more difficult to process because they have more neighbors; and (c) prior fixations before skips are less advantageous places to extract parafoveal information. The viability of these hypotheses as explanations of this reverse length effect on the noun was examined in simulations using an updated version of the E-Z Reader model (A. Pollatsek, K. Reichle, & E. D. Rayner, 2006c; E. D. Reichle, A. Pollatsek, D. L. Fisher, & K. Rayner, 1998).     

Sound specificity effects in spoken word recognition: The effect of integrality between words and sounds

Recent evidence has shown that nonlinguistic sounds co-occurring with spoken words may be retained in memory and affect later retrieval of the words. This sound-specificity effect shares many characteristics with the classic voice-specificity effect. In this study, we argue that the sound-specificity effect is conditional upon the context in which the word and sound coexist. Specifically, we argue that, besides co-occurrence, integrality between words and sounds is a crucial factor in the emergence of the effect. In two recognition-memory experiments, we compared the emergence of voice and sound specificity effects. In Experiment 1 , we examined two conditions where integrality is high. Namely, the classic voice-specificity effect (Exp. 1a) was compared with a condition in which the intensity envelope of a background sound was modulated along the intensity envelope of the accompanying spoken word (Exp. 1b). Results revealed a robust voice-specificity effect and, critically, a comparable sound-specificity effect: A change in the paired sound from exposure to test led to a decrease in word-recognition performance. In the second experiment, we sought to disentangle the contribution of integrality from a mere co-occurrence context effect by removing the intensity modulation. The absence of integrality led to the disappearance of the sound-specificity effect. Taken together, the results suggest that the assimilation of background sounds into memory cannot be reduced to a simple context effect. Rather, it is conditioned by the extent to which words and sounds are perceived as integral as opposed to distinct auditory objects.     

情绪词类型效应：区分情绪标签词和情绪负载词的行为和神经活动证据

情绪标签词直接表达情绪状态,而情绪负载词本身不表达情绪状态,但能引发个体的情绪反应。通过对情绪标签词和情绪负载词的相关研究综述发现,情绪标签词与情绪负载词的加工优势存在不一致的结果;任务需求、语言类型和词汇特征是导致情绪词类型效应不一致的主要原因;情绪标签词与情绪负载词的加工差异可以通过语义表征的具身假说、密度假说进行解释。未来研究应深入考察情绪标签词与情绪负载词加工差异的原因;考察两种词在句子和语篇水平的加工差异;提供能够直接解释情绪词类型效应的理论假说;对比中英双语者加工中文和英文情绪标签词和情绪负载词的差异;采用神经成像技术继续探查情绪信息与语义信息加工的神经机制。     

Duration differences between rare and common words and their implications for the interpretation of word frequency effects

The spoken durations of rare and common words were compared in three experiments. Depending upon the task and the amount of practice, rare words (with frequencies less than 3 per million) were spoken as much as 24% slower than common words (with frequencies greater than 100 per million), when the words were equated for number of letters. This difference was observed even when the memory and lexical access demands of the task were minimized, and it can be explained by differences in the phonetic constituents of the two classes of words. The existence of these phonetic differences has been previously reported by Landauer and Streeter (1973) and by Zipf (1935). These findings argue against the view that all effects on the processing of accurately perceived words that are correlated with frequency may be unambiguously ascribed to operations that involve secondary memory (although this may be true of frequency effects per se). One recent experiment (Watkins, 1.977) is examined in light of these findings.     

Bounding of letter sequences and the integration of visually presented words

Ss wrote down letters that were presented briefly in various temporal and geometric arrangements. Results reveal marked impairment in processing more than one temporally extended word in parallel. The impairment cannot be attributed to spatial separation of letters by itself, to sequence, or to inability to discriminate the letters. The concept of ‘bounding’ is introduced to account for the perception of familiar words in a continuing flow of information; the results suggest that only one object can be bounded at a time. They also suggest that the information that guides the eyes' movements in reading is qualitatively different from the information extracted from the printed text.     

Preliminary letter identification in the perception of words and nonwords.

Words with mixed uppercase and lowercase letters (e.g. fAdE) were perceived more accurately than mixed-case pseudowords (e.g. gAdE), and mixed-case pseudowords were perceived more accurately than mixed-case unrelated letter strings (e.g. eFdT). In addition, same-case words were perceived more accurately than their mixed-case counterparts. The same held true for pseudowords but not for unrelated letter strings. The results are compatible with the view that both letter identify and visual form information are used in word perception.     

Forced serial processing of words and letter strings: A reexamination

Words and nonword strings, three and seven letters long, were displayed serially (i.e., one letter at a time) or simultaneously, with or without a backward mask following display of each letter or string. Recognition of words, and of individual letters within words, was markedly impaired in the masked serial condition relative to the unmasked serial, unmasked simultaneous, and masked simultaneous conditions. Analogous differences were smaller or nonexistent for seven-letter nonwords; however, three-letter nonwords produced relatively “wordlike” data. Implications for the issue of spatially serial vs. parallel processing in word recognition are discussed.     

The influence of word shading and word length on eye movements during reading

In three experiments rats were given short or long preexposure (4 or 10 sessions) to two compound flavours, AX and BX, according to an intermixed or a blocked schedule. Following preexposure, aversion conditioning trials were given with AX as the conditioned stimulus (CS). In Experiments 1 and 2, retardation and summation tests were then carried out to assess the inhibitory properties of B (an Espinet procedure). In Experiment 3, test trials evaluated generalization from AX to BX (the standard perceptual learning procedure). The results showed that B performed as an inhibitor of the unconditioned stimulus (US; an Espinet effect) only after long intermixed preexposure, whereas a reliable perceptual learning effect was observed both after short and after long preeexposure. The observation that B had no detectable inhibitory properties after short preexposure casts doubt on the suggestion that inhibitory learning is responsible for perceptual learning after brief exposure to AX and BX.     

Eye movements and word skipping during reading: effects of word length and predictability

Eye movements were monitored as subjects read sentences containing high- or low-predictable target words. The extent to which target words were predictable from prior context was varied: Half of the target words were predictable, and the other half were unpredictable. In addition, the length of the target word varied: The target words were short (4-6 letters), medium (7-9 letters), or long (10-12 letters). Length and predictability both yielded strong effects on the probability of skipping the target words and on the amount of time readers fixated the target words (when they were not skipped). However, there was no interaction in any of the measures examined for either skipping or fixation time. The results demonstrate that word predictability (due to contextual constraint) and word length have strong and independent influences on word skipping and fixation durations. Furthermore, because the long words extended beyond the word identification span, the data indicate that skipping can occur on the basis of partial information in relation to word identity.     

Parallel processing of whole words and morphemes in visual word recognition

Models of morphological processing make different predictions about whether morphologically complex written words are initially decomposed and recognized on the basis of their morphemic subunits or whether they can directly be accessed as whole words and at what point semantics begin to influence morphological processing. In this study, we used unprimed and masked primed lexical decision to compare truly suffixed (darkest) and pseudosuffixed words (glossary) with within-boundary (d ra kest/g ol ssary) to across-boundary (dar ek st/glos as ry) letter transpositions. Significant transposed-letter similarity effects were found independently of the morphological position of the letter transposition, demonstrating that, in English, morphologically complex whole-word representations can be directly accessed at initial word processing stages. In a third masked primed lexical decision experiment, the same materials were used in the context of stem target priming, and it was found that truly suffixed primes facilitate the recognition of their stem-target (darkest–DARK) to the same extent as pseudosuffixed primes (glossary–GLOSS), which is consistent with theories of early morpho-orthographic decomposition. Taken together, our findings provide evidence for both whole-word access and morphological decomposition at initial stages of visual word recognition and are discussed in the context of a hybrid account.