在汉字视觉识别中字形和字音作用的实验研究

对高、低频汉字分别进行音同、形似、义近和无关四种条件下的目标字的启动识别和倒掩蔽识别的研究,考察汉字视觉识别中字音、字形的激活和激活点问题。结果证实：（１）在汉字识党识别中,字形不仅参与而且在到达心理词典之前被激活;（２）在汉字视觉识别中字音也参与,但字音不在到达心理词典之前被激活,因而,不存在语音转录现象．汉字视觉识别过程符合“直通假设”;（３）从总的来看,字颇影响汉字视觉识别。     

聋生汉字识别的同音判断与启动效应实验研究

本研究采用暂同形似、音同形异、音异形似和无关字四类汉字字组为实验材料．每类字组都按汉字使用频率分为低频字、中频字、高频字三种．对使用手语聋生和使用口语聋生进行了同音判断和启动效应实验,旨在探究聋生在汉字识别过程中语音编码所起的作用。实验结果表明,在聋生汉字识别中,字形的知觉加工对提取语音具有非常重要的作用,但语音的提取对聋生来说非常困难。不同字频对不同字组的同音判断成绩的影响不同,表明聋生对不同汉字的语音意识不同。聋生在汉字识别中存在语音混淆和字形混淆的现象,说明语音编码和字形编码在汉字识别过程中都起了重要的作用。字频对聋生汉字识别的影响也不同,同频字产生语音特征的影响;低频字产生字形特征的影响;而中频字都不产生语音特征和字形特征的影响。     

高、低频汉字形音义激活的时间进程

采用基于字形的启动范畴判断任务,通过变化SOA和不同的启动类型,考察高、低频汉字形音义激活的相对时间进程。结果表明,高频汉字形音义激活的时间顺序为字形—字义—字音;低频汉字字形的激活在先,字音、字义的激活时间未能分开。这说明汉字的书面使用频率是影响汉字形、音、义激活时间进程的重要因素。本研究进一步支持了汉字形—音、形—义连接强度受汉字使用频率影响的观点。     

汉字识别中形音义激活时间进程的研究（Ⅱ）

两个实验分别采用基于语义的和基于语音的启动范畴判断作业,在不同的SOA条件下,考察低频汉字形、音、义信息激活的相对时间进程。实验结果表明,低频汉字字形的激活在先,字音和字义的激活同时进行。低频汉字形、音、义激活的这种顺序不受基于语义还是基于语音的实验任务的影响,但实验任务影响了低频汉字字音、字义激活出现时间的早晚。     

汉字读音中的音似与形似启动效应

本研究使用启动命名法,对汉字读音过程中的音似和形似启动效应进行了初步探讨。结果发现,音和形都相似的启动字和目标字之间存在着显著的启动效应。关于字音和字形的相对作用,在本研究中音似启动效应显著,表明汉语读者的心理词典结构中存在着语音联结通路。形似启动效应不显著,但字形的启动作用值得进一步研究。     

中文阅读过程中字形快速启动的眼动研究

以字形相似的汉字为启动字,探讨字形信息激活在汉字识别中的时间进程。实验1采用命名任务考察三种启动时间条件下是否存在字形启动效应,结果发现当启动时间为35ms时,出现稳定的字形启动效应。实验2采用眼动记录法考察阅读过程中的快速启动,结果在三种启动时间条件下均未发现显著的启动效应。     

二、三和五年级儿童对形旁语义的加工

结合启动范式和汉字判断任务,通过操纵目标字语义透明度,在汉字阅读过程探查了二、三、五年级儿童对形旁语义的加工。采用 3×2×2 混合实验设计,自变量为被试类型（小学二、三、五年级儿童）、启动字类型（字形相关 vs. 无关）和目标字类型（透明字 vs. 模糊字）。结果发现启动字类型、目标字类型和年级三者交互作用显著。随后分析在三五年级儿童中发现了显著的独立于字形的形旁语义启动效应,启动字中的共享形旁对模糊字的识别产生了更大的抑制作用,而在二年级儿童中并没有发现这种效应。说明形旁语义在儿童的心理词典中存在独立表征,可以被激活并促进儿童对汉字的识别,但是需要儿童的阅读理解能力发展到一定程度。     

部件启动对合体汉字字形识别的影响

本实验探索了部件启动对左右型合体汉字字形识别的影响,得到以下结果：（1）启动部件与目标字中左部件同形或相似（少一笔划或多一笔划）,会促进对目标字的字形识另询工,表现出正向启动效应;相反,异形部件对目标字加工有干扰作用,表现为负向启动效应;（2）各种启动刺激类型所产生的启动量随启动刺激呈现时间增长而变化。通过对各种实验条件下,启动量的分析,笔者认为：本实验为汉字相互作用激活模型提供了新的证据。     

汉字识别中的同音字效应:语音影响字形加工的证据

两个实验考察汉字识别中语音对字形加工产生的影响。实验一采用视觉呈现材料的词汇判断法,没有发现如同英语研究中的同音字效应,实验二采用视、听跨通道的实验范式,首先呈现汉字的语音,然后进行视觉的词汇判断,结果发现,当出现的汉字为低频字时,其同音字越多,词汇判断的时间越长。这说明汉字的识别过程中,语音对低频字字形的加工有一定影响。     

汉字识别中形音义激活时间进程的研究(Ⅰ)

分别采用基于语义的和基于语音的启动范畴判断作业,在不同的SOA条件下,考察高频汉字识别中形音义信息激活的相对时间进程。两个实验的结果表明,高频汉字形音义激活的时序为字形一字义一字音的顺序。这一结果揭示,高频汉字字义的提取更符合直通理论的预期。高频汉字的语音是自动激活的,但语音的激活可能发生在字义通达之后。     

The Modulation of Visual and Task Characteristics of a Writing System on Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Recognition—A Computational Exploration

Through computational modeling, here we examine whether visual and task characteristics of writing systems alone can account for lateralization differences in visual word recognition between different languages without assuming influence from left hemisphere (LH) lateralized language processes. We apply a hemispheric processing model of face recognition to visual word recognition; the model implements a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception that posits low spatial frequency biases in the right hemisphere and high spatial frequency (HSF) biases in the LH. We show two factors that can influence lateralization: (a) Visual similarity among words: The more similar the words in the lexicon look visually, the more HSF/LH processing is required to distinguish them, and (b) Requirement to decompose words into graphemes for grapheme‐phoneme mapping: Alphabetic reading (involving grapheme‐phoneme conversion) requires more HSF/LH processing than logographic reading (no grapheme‐phoneme mapping). These factors may explain the difference in lateralization between English and Chinese orthographic processing.     

Phonology and orthography in reading aloud

This study investigated the orthographic and phonological contribution of visually masked primes to reading aloud in Dutch. Although there is a relatively clear mapping between the spelling and sound of words in Dutch, words starting with the letter c are ambiguous as to whether they begin with the phoneme /S/ (e.g., citroen, “lemon”) or with the phoneme /k/ (e.g., complot, “conspiracy”). Therefore, using words of this type, one can tease apart the contributions of orthographic and phonological activation in reading aloud. Dutch participants read aloud bisyllabic c-initial target words, which were preceded by visually masked, bisyllabic prime words that either shared the initial phoneme with the target (phonologically related) or the first grapheme (orthographically related) or both (phonologically and orthographically related). Unrelated primes did not share the first segment with the target. Response latencies in the phonologically related conditions were shorter than those in the unrelated condition. However, primes that were orthographically related did not speed up responses. One may conclude that the nature of the onset effect in reading aloud is phonological and not orthographic.     

Phonological and semantic processes influence beginning readers' ability to learn to read words

Children (4 to 6 years of age) were taught to associate printed 3- or 4-letter abbreviations, or cues, with spoken words (e.g., bfr for beaver). All but 1 of the letters in the cue corresponded to phonemes in the spoken target word. Two types of cues were constructed: phonetic cues, in which the medial letter was phonetically similar to the target word, and control cues, in which the central phoneme was phonetically dissimilar. In Experiment 1, children learned the phonetic cues better than the control cues, and learning correlated with measures of phonological skill and knowledge of the meanings of the words taught. In Experiment 2, the target words differed on a semantic variable-imageability-and learning was influenced by both the phonetic properties of the cue and the imageability of the words used.     

Word-frequency effects in long-term semantic priming and false memory

Several studies have used the lexical decision task (LDT) with the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false-memory paradigm to investigate whether long-term semantic priming (LTSP) occurs following presentation of lists of items (e.g., bed, dream, snore) for related non-presented lure words (e.g., sleep). However, results have been mixed, with some studies observing priming, whilst others have not. The present study had four goals: (i) to investigate the existence of LTSP in the LDT; (ii) to investigate effects of LTSP on standard effects of word frequency on LDT performance; (iii) to investigate the effect, if any, of word frequency on true and false recall; and (iv) to compare LDT performance with performance on a subsequent free-recall task. The findings showed (i) a significant effect of LTSP on LDT performance; (ii) no effect of LTSP on standard effects of word frequency on LDT performance; (iii) no effect of word frequency on either true or false free recall; and (iv) a significant relationship between LDT and free-recall performance. Implications of these findings for understanding LTSP and false memories are discussed.     

Tracking independence and merging of prosodic and phonemic processing across infancy

Recent evidence suggests division of labor in phonological analysis underlying speech recognition. Adults and children appear to decompose the speech stream into phoneme‐relevant information and into syllable stress. Here we investigate whether both speech processing streams develop from a common path in infancy, or whether there are two separate streams from early on. We presented stressed and unstressed syllables (spoken primes) followed by initially stressed early learned disyllabic German words (spoken targets). Stress overlap and phoneme overlap between the primes and the initial syllable of the targets varied orthogonally. We tested infants 3, 6 and 9 months after birth. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) revealed stress priming without phoneme priming in the 3‐month‐olds; phoneme priming without stress priming in the 6‐month‐olds; and phoneme priming, stress priming as well as an interaction of both in 9‐month‐olds. In general the present findings reveal that infants start with separate processing streams related to syllable stress and to phoneme‐relevant information; and that they need to learn to merge both aspects of speech processing. In particular the present results suggest (i) that phoneme‐free prosodic processing dominates in early infancy; (ii) that prosody‐free phoneme processing dominates in middle infancy; and (iii) that both types of processing are operating in parallel and can be merged in late infancy.     

Phonetic priming, neighborhood activation, and PARSYN

Perceptual identification of spoken words in noise is less accurate when the target words are preceded by spoken phonetically related primes (Goldinger, Luce, & Pisoni, 1989). The present investigation replicated and extended this finding. Subjects shadowed target words presented in the clear that were preceded by phonetically related or unrelated primes. In addition, primes were either higher or lower in frequency than the target words. Shadowing latencies were significantly longer for target words preceded by phonetically related primes, but only when the prime-target interstimulus interval was short (50 vs. 500 msec). These results demonstrate that phonetic priming does not depend on target degradation and that it affects processing time. We further demonstrated that PARSYN--a connectionist instantiation of the neighborhood activation model--accurately simulates the observed pattern of priming.     

On the immunity of perceptual implicit memory to manipulations of attention

In four experiments, we examined the effect of manipulating study phase attention in a Stroop task on the extent of repetition priming in the lexical decision task (LDT). Experiment 1 replicated the immunity of the LDT to division of attention reported by Szymanski and MacLeod (1996), using a standard Stroop configuration. Response times to previously encountered words were identical regardless of whether the participants were required to read the words or name the color in which they were presented. Experiment 2 demonstrated that implementing the Stroop manipulation across separate visual objects reduced but did not eliminate priming of unattended words, provided the words remained in the attended region of the stimulus display. When this constraint was removed in Experiment 3, priming of unattended words disappeared. Experiment 4 demonstrated statistically equivalent priming for attended and unattended words when the Stroop manipulation remained in the same visual object but attention was directed to a single letter of the word. In all four experiments, the Stroop manipulation had a clear effect on recognition. These results qualify claims that the LDT might be immune to manipulations of study phase attention and suggest that the LDT has a lower threshold level of attention at encoding than do other standard implicit tests of memory.     

Word length and lexical activation: longer is better

Many models of spoken word recognition posit the existence of lexical and sublexical representations, with excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms used to affect the activation levels of such representations. Bottom-up evidence provides excitatory input, and inhibition from phonetically similar representations leads to lexical competition. In such a system, long words should produce stronger lexical activation than short words, for 2 reasons: Long words provide more bottom-up evidence than short words, and short words are subject to greater inhibition due to the existence of more similar words. Four experiments provide evidence for this view. In addition, reaction-time-based partitioning of the data shows that long words generate greater activation that is available both earlier and for a longer time than is the case for short words. As a result, lexical influences on phoneme identification are extremely robust for long words but are quite fragile and condition-dependent for short words. Models of word recognition must consider words of all lengths to capture the true dynamics of lexical activation.     

Capacity demands of phoneme selection in word production: new evidence from dual-task experiments

Three dual-task experiments investigated the capacity demands of phoneme selection in picture naming. On each trial, participants named a target picture (Task 1) and carried out a tone discrimination task (Task 2). To vary the time required for phoneme selection, the authors combined the targets with phonologically related or unrelated distractor pictures (Experiment 1) or words, which were clearly visible (Experiment 2) or masked (Experiment 3). When pictures or masked words were presented, the tone discrimination and picture naming latencies were shorter in the related condition than in the unrelated condition, which indicates that phoneme selection requires central processing capacity. However, when the distractor words were clearly visible, the facilitatory effect was confined to the picture naming latencies. This pattern arose because the visible related distractor words facilitated phoneme selection but slowed down speech monitoring processes that had to be completed before the response to the tone could be selected.     

Construction and learning to spell

Little is known about the way in which children learn the rules of literacy. We argue that children’s learning about orthographic rules can be the result of their own constructions. We provide longitudinal evidence on Greek children’s understanding of the morphophonemic rules for the spelling of the /o/ and /e/ vowel sounds in stems and inflections. These sounds can be spelled with more than one phonetically acceptable grapheme. When the vowel sound represents part of an inflection or the inflection itself, the grammatical status of the word is the key to the right choice between the alternative spellings. In contrast, no such morphemic rule applies when the sound is part of the stem morpheme. The spelling of each of these vowel sounds in the stem must rely on rote learning. Our results suggest that children go through a three-step developmental sequence in learning how to spell /o/ and /e/ in inflections: initially they adopt only one spelling for each vowel sound. Later, when they add the alternative spelling to their repertoire, they overgeneralize it to inappropriate words. Eventually, they restrict the alternative spellings to the grammatically appropriate words. We argue that these overgeneralizations, which have also been found in English, French and Portuguese spelling, indicate that children at first try to extend an existing rule, based on grapheme–phoneme conversion, for the new spelling. This slight change produces new experiences for them which allow them to construct a higher-level morphophonemic spelling rule.