The interaction of sentence context and perceptual analysis in word identification

The influence of sentence context on word identification has, in some interactive models, been attributed to enhanced accuracy or speed of perceptual analysis. This view is challenged by two experiments in which contextually enhanced word identification was found only when a target’s relevance to the sentence context was correlated with its presence. When this constraint was removed by using contextually relevant foils, accuracy in detecting words in normal and scrambled sentences did not differ reliably. Moreover, under conditions that constituted a negative correlation between target relevance and presence, word identification was more accurate with scrambled than with normal sentences. These results are consistent with models of sentence context effects that are based on the assumptions that (1) perceptual analysis proceeds independently of contextual analysis, and (2) the results of these analyses are integrated to determine a word’s identity.     

In search of perceptual influences of sentence context on word recognition

A major issue in the study of word perception concerns the nature (perceptual or nonperceptual) of sentence context effects. The authors compared effects of legal, word replacement, nonword replacement, and transposed contexts on target word performance using the Reicher-Wheeler task to suppress nonperceptual influences of contextual and lexical constraint. Experiment 1 showed superior target word performance for legal (e.g., "it began to flap/flop") over all other contexts and for transposed over word replacement and nonword replacement contexts. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with higher constraint contexts (e.g., "the cellar is dark/dank") and Experiment 3 showed that strong constraint contexts improved performance for congruent (e.g., "born to be wild") but not incongruent (e.g., mild) target words. These findings support the view that the very perception of words can be enhanced when words are presented in legal sentence contexts.     

The generalizability of context effects on word recognition: A reconsideration of the roles of parafoveal priming and sentence context

In three experiments, subjects named target words preceded by congruous, incongruous, or neutral sentence contexts. There was no evidence that the recognition of the target word was affected by the semantic characteristics of a word presented immediately to the right of it. The nature of the preceding sentence context did affect target-naming speed. However, the magnitude of the context effect was considerably smaller in these experiments, in which nonterminal target words were used, than in previous experiments in which the target word was always the final word of the sentence, was highly predictable from the context, and was often semantically related to words in the sentence. The implications of these two findings for theories of reading and context effects are discussed.     

Adult age differences in the effects of sentence context and stimulus degradation during visual word recognition

I investigated adult age differences in the efficiency of feature-extraction processes during visual word recognition. Participants were 24 young adults (M age = 21.0 years) and 24 older adults (M age = 66.5 years). On each trial, subjects made a word/nonword discrimination (i.e., lexical decision) regarding a target letter-string that was presented as the final item of a sentence context. The target was presented either intact or degraded visually (by the presence of asterisks between adjacent letters). Age differences in lexical decisions speed were greater for degraded targets than for intact targets, suggesting an age-related slowing in the extraction of feature-level information. For degraded word targets, however, the amount of performance benefit provided by the sentence context was greater for older adults than for young adults. It thus appears that an age-related deficiency at an early stage of word recognition is accompanied by an increased contribution from semantic context.     

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.     

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: evidence for nonselective lexical access

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. In the present study, the authors investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a 2nd language (L2) lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and nonidentical cognate words (e.g., banaan-banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment that used eyetracking, the authors showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals.     

Interactions between color and word processing in a flanker task

To examine interactions between color and word attributes, participants responded, either manually or vocally, to a central target (color patch or word) flanked by a Stroop stimulus. Color and word attributes of the flanker affected both vocal and manual responding to color patches. Color and word flankers also affected manual responding to word targets, but only word flanker affected vocal responding to word targets. These results are not consistent with models (e.g., translational models) of Stroop tasks, which posit that interactions between colors and words occur only when vocal responding is required.     

The relationship between sentence meaning and word order: Evidence from structural priming in German

Most theories of human language production assume that generating a sentence involves several stages, including an initial stage where the prelinguistic message is determined and a subsequent stage of grammatical encoding. However, it is contentious whether grammatical encoding involves separate stages of grammatical-function assignment and linearization. To address this question, we examined the mapping between the message level and grammatical encoding in two structural priming experiments in which German speakers choose between three different structures expressing ditransitive events. Although speakers showed a tendency to repeat the order of constituents (noun phrase–prepositional phrase, NP–PP, vs. NP–NP), they were additionally primed to repeat the order of thematic roles when constituent structure was constant (NP_RECIPIENT–NP_THEME vs. NP_THEME–NP_RECIPIENT). Experiment 2 found that the latter effect could not be due to persistence of the order of phrases referring to animate and inanimate entities. These results suggest a direct mapping of thematic roles to word order, consistent with a model in which the message is mapped onto syntactic structure in a single stage.     

Semantic context and word frequency effects in visual word recognition

Semantic context and word frequency factors exert a strong influence on the time that it takes subjects to recognize words. Some of the explanations that have been offered for the effects of the two factors suggest that context and frequency should interact, and other explanations imply additivity. In a recent study, Schuberth and Eimas reported that context and frequency effects added to determine their subjects' reaction times in a lexical decision (word vs. nonword) task. The present experiment reexamines this question with improved procedures. The data show that context and frequency do interact, with a semantic context facilitating the processing of low-frequency words more than high-frequency words.     

Vertical similarity in spoken word recognition: Multiple lexical activation,individual differences,and the role of sentence context

Four experiments investigated acoustic-phonetic similarity in the mapping process between the speech signal and lexical representations (vertical similarity). Auditory stimuli were used where ambiguous initial phonemes rendered a phoneme sequence lexically ambiguous (perceptual-lexical ambiguities). A cross-modal priming paradigm (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) showed facilitation for targets related to both interpretations of the ambiguities, indicating multiple activation. Experiment 4 investigated individual differences and the role of sentence context in vertical similarity mapping. The results support a model where spoken word recognition proceeds via goodness-of-fit mapping between speech and lexical representations that is not influenced by sentence context.     

Interaction with context during human sentence processing

Psychological theories of natural language processing have usually assumed that the sentence processor resolves local syntactic ambiguities by selecting a single analysis on the basis of structural criteria such as Frazier's (1978) “minimal attachment.” According to such theories, alternative analyses will only be attempted if the initial analysis subsequently proves inconsistent with the context. (See also Ferreira & Clifton, 1986; Ford, Bresnan, & Kaplan, 1982; Rayner, Carlson, & Frazier, 1983). An alternative hypothesis exists, however: If sentences are understood incrementally, more or less word-by-word (Marlsen-Wilson, 1973, 1975), then syntactic processing can in principle exploit the fact that interpretations are available, using them “interactively” to select among alternative syntactic analyses on the basis of their plausibility with respect to the context. The present paper considers possible architectures for such incremental and interactive sentence processors, and argues for an architecture     

Effects of clausal structure and word frequency in sentence processing

A phoneme-monitoring task was employed to test the effects of clausal structure and lexical ambiguity on sentence processing. Results supported the hypothesis that the clause serves as a psychologically real unit of sentence processing, with the semantic interpretation of each clause being assigned at the clause boundary. The frequency of the ambiguous or control word preceding the critical item in the phoneme-monitoring task was also found to affect the results obtained, with higher frequency words leading to longer mean reaction times.This research is based on a thesis submitted by the first author as partial fulfillment of the M.A. degree at The University of Iowa. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, San Antonio, Texas, 1978.     

词频与阅读方式对词跨行呈现效应的影响

通过使用眼动追踪技术,采用2（呈现条件：同行呈现、跨行呈现）×2（词频：高频、低频）×2（阅读方式：朗读、默读）的被试内实验设计,探讨了词频和阅读方式对词跨行呈现效应的影响。结果发现,呈现条件、词频和阅读方式的主效应显著,跨行呈现、低频和朗读的凝视时间和总注视时间更长、总注视次数更多;呈现条件之间在凝视时间上的差异,高频词大于低频词;呈现条件之间在凝视时间和总注视次数上的差异,朗读大于默读。结果表明,词跨行呈现干扰了阅读,且这种干扰作用受词频和阅读方式的影响。     

Stress and context in auditory word recognition

Recent work in psycholinguistics has revealed that the role of lexical stress in auditory word recognition may be a complex one involving other potential sources of information. In the present investigation, the nature of lexical stress effects on auditory word recognition in context is examined. The ability of subjects to identify words based on the prosodic pattern of the word is examined for the words in isolation and in a sentence context. The results revealed a small influence of stress on the identification of the stimulus waveforms relative to a large effect of context. The data indicate that lexical stress is used in the identification of the words; however, its role is minor compared to the importance of contextual information.This article is based on sections of a doctoral dissertation presented to Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. This research was supported in part by NIH research grant NS-12179-08 to Indiana University and a Graduate Student Grant-in-Aid of Research from Indiana University.     

Words translated in sentence contexts produce repetition priming in visual word comprehension and spoken word production

Previous research with words read in context at encoding showed little if any long-term repetition priming. In Experiment 1, 96 Spanish–English bilinguals translated words in isolation or in sentence contexts at encoding. At test, they translated words or named pictures corresponding to words produced at encoding and control words not previously presented. Repetition priming was reliable in all conditions, but priming effects were generally smaller for contextualized than for isolated words. Repetition priming in picture naming indicated priming from production in context. A componential analysis indicated priming from comprehension in context, but only in the less fluent language. Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1 with auditory presentation of the words and sentences to be translated. Repetition priming was reliable in all conditions, but priming effects were again smaller for contextualized than for isolated words. Priming in picture naming indicated priming from production in context, but the componential analysis indicated no detectable priming for auditory comprehension. The results of the two experiments taken together suggest that repetition priming reflects the long-term learning that occurs with comprehension and production exposures to words in the context of natural language.     

Semantic context effects and priming in word association

Two experiments investigated priming in word association, an implicit memory task. In the study phase of Experiment 1, semantically ambiguous target words were presented in sentences that biased their interpretation. The appropriate interpretation of the target was either congruent or incongruent with the cue presented in a subsequent word association task. Priming (i.e., a higher proportion of target responses relative to a nonstudied baseline) was obtained for the congruent condition, but not for the incongruent condition. In Experiment 2, study sentences emphasized particular meaning aspects of nonambiguous targets. The word association task showed a higher proportion of target responses for targets studied in the more congruent sentence context than for targets studied in the less congruent sentence context. These results indicate that priming in word association depends largely on the storage of information relating the cue and target.     

Letter information and orthographic context in word perception

Theories of word perception in reading can be categorized in terms of the assumption made about whether or not a word context modifies the feature analysis of its component letters. Independence theories assume that the visual information passed on by feature analysis is independent of word context. Nonindependence theories assume that a word context directly influences visual analysis. Some nonindependence theories have assumed that word context enhances feature analysis of letters, others have assumed that word context overrides feature analysis of letters, and some have assumed that word context directs which letters are analyzed. The present experiment provided a critical test between the two classes of theories by independently varying orthographic context and visual letter information in a letter recognition task. The results contradict the qualitative predictions of the class of nonindependence theories and are accurately described by a quantification of independence theory.     

The interpretation of ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence context

Many trimorphemic words are structurally and semantically ambiguous. For example, unlock-able can either be un-lockable (cannot be locked) or unlock-able (can be unlocked). Which interpretation is preferred and whether the preceding sentence context affects the initial interpretation is not clear from prior research. The present experiment embedded ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence contexts, manipulated whether or not preceding context disambiguated the meaning, and examined the pattern of fixation durations on the ambiguous word and the remainder of the text. The results indicated that the unlock-able interpretation was preferred; moreover, preceding context did not exert a significant effect until the eyes had initially exited from the target word.     

Effect of backward priming on word recognition in single-word and sentence contexts

Backward priming was investigated under conditions similar to those used in lexical ambiguity research. Subjects received prime-target word pairs that were associated either unidirectionally (BABY-STORK) or bidirectionally (BABY-CRY). In the first experiment, targets were presented 500 ms following the onset of visual primes, and subjects made naming or lexical decision responses to the targets. Forward priming was obtained in all conditions, while backward priming (i.e., priming for pairs in which there was a unidirectional target-to-prime association, as in BABY-STORK) occurred only with lexical decision. In the second experiment, primes were presented auditorily, either in isolation or in a sentence. Targets followed the offset of the primes either immediately or after 200 ms. Backward priming occurred with both response tasks, but only when the prime was an isolated word. In addition, backward priming decreased over time with the naming task, but not with lexical decision. These results suggest that the locus of the backward priming effect is different for the two response tasks. Further, the lack of a backward priming effect with sentence contexts suggests that backward priming cannot account for the demonstrations of multiple access in the lexical ambiguity literature. These results, therefore, support a context-independent view of lexical access.     

The effect of word position on eye-movements in sentence and paragraph reading

The present study explores the role of the word position-in-text in sentence and paragraph reading. Three eye-movement data sets based on the reading of Dutch and German unrelated sentences reveal a sizeable, replicable increase in reading times over several words at the beginning and the end of sentences. The data from the paragraph-based English-language Dundee corpus replicate the pattern and also indicate that the increase in inspection times is driven by the visual boundaries of the text organized in lines, rather than by syntactic sentence boundaries. We argue that this effect is independent of several established lexical, contextual, and oculomotor predictors of eye-movement behaviour. We also provide evidence that the effect of word position-in-text has two independent components: a start-up effect, arguably caused by a strategic oculomotor programme of saccade planning over the line of text, and a wrap-up effect, originating in cognitive processes of comprehension and semantic integration.