Does word frequency affect lexical selection in speech production?

We evaluated whether lexical selection in speech production is affected by word frequency by means of two experiments. In Experiment 1 participants named pictures using utterances with the structure “pronoun + verb + adjective”. In Experiment 2 participants had to perform a gender decision task on the same pictures. Access to the noun's grammatical gender is needed in both tasks, and therefore lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is required. However, retrieval of the phonological properties (lexeme retrieval) of the referent noun is not needed to perform the tasks. In both experiments we observed faster latencies for high-frequency pictures than for low-frequency pictures. This frequency effect was stable over four repetitions of the stimuli. Our results suggest that lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is sensitive to word frequency. This interpretation runs against the hypothesis that a word's frequency exerts its effects only at the level at which the phonological properties of words are retrieved.     

The role of the frequency of constituents in compound words: Evidence from Basque and Spanish

Recent data from compound word processing suggests that compounds are recognized via their constituent lexemes (Juhasz, Starr, Inhoff, & Placke, 2003). The present lexical decision experiment manipulated orthogonally the frequency of the constituents of compound words in two languages: Basque and Spanish. Basque and Spanish diverge widely in their morphological properties and in the number of existing compound words. Furthermore, the head lexeme (i.e., the most meaningful lexeme related to the whole-word meaning) in Spanish tends to be the second lexeme, whereas in Basque the percentage is more distributed. Results showed a facilitative effect of the frequency of the second lexeme, in both Basque and Spanish compounds. Thus, both Basque and Spanish readers decompose compounds into their constituents for lexical access, and this decomposition is carried out in a language-independent and blind-to-semantics manner. We examine the implications of these results for models of lexical access.     

Does word frequency affect lexical selection in speech production?

We evaluated whether lexical selection in speech production is affected by word frequency by means of two experiments. In Experiment 1 participants named pictures using utterances with the structure “pronoun + verb + adjective”. In Experiment 2 participants had to perform a gender decision task on the same pictures. Access to the noun's grammatical gender is needed in both tasks, and therefore lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is required. However, retrieval of the phonological properties (lexeme retrieval) of the referent noun is not needed to perform the tasks. In both experiments we observed faster latencies for high-frequency pictures than for low-frequency pictures. This frequency effect was stable over four repetitions of the stimuli. Our results suggest that lexical selection (lemma retrieval) is sensitive to word frequency. This interpretation runs against the hypothesis that a word's frequency exerts its effects only at the level at which the phonological properties of words are retrieved.     

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: Evidence from novel schwa words

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /??nyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.     

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: evidence from novel schwa words

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /??nyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.     

Experimental evidence for serial models of lexical access: a judgment task

The hypothesis that the lemma and lexeme levels of lexical access are in a feed-forward serial relation is supported. Subjects judge the degree of semantic relatedness of pairs of words. Stimuli are all functionally synonymous; they are pairs of words implicated in natural word blends. Half the stimuli are phonologically related and the other half are not. In one experiment the pairs are presented in a sentential context and in the other no context is provided. In both the experiments the phonologically unrelated pairs are judged closer in meaning than the phonologically related pairs. This is interpreted as support for serial models of lexical access.     

Lexical access in the production of pronouns

Speakers can use pronouns when their conceptual referents are accessible from the preceding discourse, as in 'The flower is red. It turns blue'. Theories of language production agree that in order to produce a noun semantic, syntactic, and phonological information must be accessed. However, little is known about lexical access to pronouns. In this paper, we propose a model of pronoun access in German. Since the forms of German pronouns depend on the grammatical gender of the nouns they replace, the model claims that speakers must access the syntactic representation of the replaced noun (its lemma) to select a pronoun. In two experiments using the lexical decision during naming paradigm [Levelt, W.J.M., Schriefers, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A.S., Pechmann, T., Havinga, J., 1991a. The time course of lexical access in speech production: a study of picture naming. Psychological Review 98, 122-142], we investigated whether lemma access automatically entails the activation of the corresponding word form or whether a word form is only activated when the noun itself is produced, but not when it is replaced by a pronoun. Experiment 1 showed that during pronoun production the phonological form of the replaced noun is activated. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this phonological activation was not a residual of the use of the noun in the preceding sentence. Thus, when a pronoun is produced, the lemma and the phonological form of the replaced noun become reactivated.     

Specific-word frequency is not all that counts in speech production: comments on Caramazza,Costa, et al. (2001) and new experimental data

A. Caramazza, A. Costa, M. Miozzo, and Y. Bi (2001) reported a series of experiments demonstrating that the ease of producing a word depends only on the frequency of that specific word but not on the frequency of a homophone twin. A. Caramazza, A. Costa, et al. concluded that homophones have separate word form presentations and that the absence of frequency-inheritance effects for homophones undermines an important argument in support of 2-stage models of lexical access, which assume that syntactic (lemma) representations mediate between conceptual and phonological representations. The authors of this article evaluate the empirical basis of this conclusion, report 2 experiments demonstrating a frequency-inheritance effect, and discuss other recent evidence. It is concluded that homophones share a common word form and that the distinction between lemmas and word forms should be upheld.     

The effects of morphology on the processing of compound words: Evidence from naming,lexical decisions and eye fixations

The use of lexemes during the recognition of spatially unified familiar English compounds was examined in naming, lexical decision and sentence‐reading tasks by manipulating beginning and ending lexeme frequencies while controlling overall compound frequencies. All tasks revealed robust ending lexeme frequency effects, with compound processing being more effective when the ending lexeme was a high‐frequency word. Beginning lexeme frequency effects were more elusive and dependent on task demands. Eye movements, recorded during sentence reading, also indicated that the effects of ending lexemes occurred after the first fixation during compound viewing. Together, the results suggest either that the ending lexeme is used as an access code to locate the meaning of the full compound word or that its meaning is coactive with the meaning of the full compound.     

Age differences in resolving anaphoric expressions during reading

One crucial component of reading comprehension is the ability to bind current information to earlier text, which is often accomplished via anaphoric expressions (e.g., pronouns referring to previous nouns). Processing time for anaphors that violate expectations (e.g., 'The firefighter burned herself while rescuing victims from the building') provide a window into how the semantic representation of the referent is instantiated and retained up to the anaphor. We present data from three eye-tracking experiments examining older and younger adults' reading patterns for passages containing such local expectancy violations. Younger adults quickly registered and resolved the expectancy violation at the point at which it first occurred (as measured by increased gaze duration on the anaphor), regardless of whether sentences were read in isolation or embedded in a discourse context. Older adults, however, immediately noticed the violation only when sentences were embedded in discourse context, suggesting that they relied more on situational grounding to instantiate the referent. For neither young nor old did prior disambiguation within the context (e.g., stating the firefighter was a woman) reduce the effect of the local violation on early processing. For older readers, however, prior disambiguation facilitated anaphor resolution by reducing reprocessing. These results suggest that (a) anaphor resolution unfolds serially, such that prior disambiguating context does not 'inoculate' against local activation of salient (but contextually inappropriate) features, and that (b) older readers use the situational grounding of discourse context to support earlier access to the antecedent, and are more likely to reprocess the context for anaphor resolution.     

无语境条件下汉语词类歧义词的意义激活

以单字词为实验材料,采用启动命名任务,在孤立词条件下考察了汉语词类歧义词不同意义激活的时间进程特点。实验发现,歧义词的两种意义都能被激活,但主要意义激活得较早,次要意义激活速度较慢;当两种意义都激活之后,次要意义的激活水平降低,而主要意义仍维持在一定激活水平。结果表明,汉语词类歧义词的多重激活过程会受到意义相对频率的影响。     

Age differences in resolving anaphoric expressions during reading

ABSTRACT

One crucial component of reading comprehension is the ability to bind current information to earlier text, which is often accomplished via anaphoric expressions (e.g., pronouns referring to previous nouns). Processing time for anaphors that violate expectations (e.g., ‘The firefighter burned herself while rescuing victims from the building’) provide a window into how the semantic representation of the referent is instantiated and retained up to the anaphor. We present data from three eye-tracking experiments examining older and younger adults' reading patterns for passages containing such local expectancy violations. Younger adults quickly registered and resolved the expectancy violation at the point at which it first occurred (as measured by increased gaze duration on the anaphor), regardless of whether sentences were read in isolation or embedded in a discourse context. Older adults, however, immediately noticed the violation only when sentences were embedded in discourse context, suggesting that they relied more on situational grounding to instantiate the referent. For neither young nor old did prior disambiguation within the context (e.g., stating the firefighter was a woman) reduce the effect of the local violation on early processing. For older readers, however, prior disambiguation facilitated anaphor resolution by reducing reprocessing. These results suggest that (a) anaphor resolution unfolds serially, such that prior disambiguating context does not ‘inoculate’ against local activation of salient (but contextually inappropriate) features, and that (b) older readers use the situational grounding of discourse context to support earlier access to the antecedent, and are more likely to reprocess the context for anaphor resolution.     

Lexical access of function versus content words

There has been a simmering debate as to whether evidence exists for differential processes of lexical access for function and content words. This has centered around the frequency effect (higher word frequency reducing access times for content words but not function words). Previous work has used the lexical decision paradigm, which has been shown to reflect more than lexical access times. We measured naming times for words in sentences read for meaning. Our findings confirm that lexical access for function words is indeed faster than for content words as predicted by neurolinguistic theory and electrophysiological evidence, but that this difference can be attributed to word predictability (Cloze value) and word familiarity (log frequency). We also show that differences in frequency effect for the two word types holds only for the lower frequency words and not at all for the higher frequency words. We discuss the implications of the results for neurolinguistic theory.     

文本阅读中回指推理发生的整合性因素

探讨回指距离、干扰词的精细描述、干扰词的典型性 对回指推理（先行词通达）的影响。包括2个实验,被试是华南师范大学一二年级本科生164名。采用移动窗口技术,要求被试阅读一定篇数（如,实验1a每个被试阅读15篇）的文章,对不同条件的探测词的反应时进行统计。实验1探讨干扰词精细描述类型（精细描述高和精细描述低）对回指推理的影响。结果表明,干扰的精细描述并非是影响回指推理的主要因素。实验2探讨干扰词和先行词的典型性类型的相对变化对回指推理的影响。结果表明高典型干扰在不同回指距离条件下都会对回指推理产生影响。本研究结果初步证明在影响回指推理的干扰典型性和干扰精细描述的二个因素中,起主要作用的是干扰的典型性     

Timed picture naming in seven languages

Timed picture naming was compared in seven languages that vary along dimensions known to affect lexical access. Analyses over items focused on factors that determine cross-language universals and cross-language disparities. With regard to universals, number of alternative names had large effects on reaction time within and across languages after target-name agreement was controlled, suggesting inhibitory effects from lexical competitors. For all the languages, word frequency and goodness of depiction had large effects, but objective picture complexity did not. Effects of word structure variables (length, syllable structure, compounding, and initial frication) varied markedly over languages. Strong cross-language correlations were found in naming latencies, frequency, and length. Other-language frequency effects were observed (e.g., Chinese frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times) even after within-language effects were controlled (e.g., Spanish frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times). These surprising cross-language correlations challenge widely held assumptions about the lexical locus of length and frequency effects, suggesting instead that they may (at least in part) reflect familiarity and accessibility at a conceptual level that is shared over languages.     

Can we see syllables in monosyllabic words? A study with illusory conjunctions

Mathey, Zagar, Doignon, and Seigneuric (2006) reported an inhibitory effect of syllabic neighbourhood in monosyllabic French words suggesting that syllable units mediate the access to lexical representations of monosyllabic stimuli. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of syllable units in monosyllabic stimuli. The illusory conjunction paradigm was used to examine perceptual groupings of letters. Experiment 1 showed that potential syllables in monosyllabic French words (e.g., BI in BICHE) affected the pattern of illusory conjunctions. Experiment 2 indicated that the perceptual parsing in monosyllabic items was due to syllable information and orthographic redundancy. The implications of the data are discussed for visual word recognition processes in an interactive activation model incorporating syllable units and connected adjacent letters (IAS; Mathey et al., 2006).     

Semantic size does not matter: "bigger" words are not recognized faster

Sereno, O'Donnell, and Sereno (2009) reported that words are recognized faster in a lexical decision task when their referents are physically large than when they are small, suggesting that "semantic size" might be an important variable that should be considered in visual word recognition research and modelling. We sought to replicate their size effect, but failed to find a significant latency advantage in lexical decision for "big" words (cf. "small" words), even though we used the same word stimuli as Sereno et al. and had almost three times as many subjects. We also examined existing data from visual word recognition megastudies (e.g., English Lexicon Project) and found that semantic size is not a significant predictor of lexical decision performance after controlling for the standard lexical variables. In summary, the null results from our lab experiment--despite a much larger subject sample size than Sereno et al.--converged with our analysis of megastudy lexical decision performance, leading us to conclude that semantic size does not matter for word recognition. Discussion focuses on why semantic size (unlike some other semantic variables) is unlikely to play a role in lexical decision.     

Mediated and convergent lexical priming in language production: a comment on Levelt et al. (1991)

Levelt et al. (1991) argued that modular semantic and phonological stage theories of lexical access in language production are to be preferred over interactive spreading-activation theories (e.g., Dell, 1986). As evidence, they show no mediated semantic-phonological priming during picture naming: Retrieval of sheep primes goat, but the activation of goat is not transmitted to its phonological relative, goal. This research reconciles this result with spreading-activation theories and shows how the absence of mediated priming coexists with the convergent priming necessary to account for mixed semantic-phonological speech errors. The analysis leads to the proposal that the language-production system may best be characterized as globally modular but locally interactive.     

Stem homographs and lemma level representations

Previous studies have found that priming a target like cerr-o ("hill") with an unmasked stem-homograph (e.g., cerr-ar, "to close") or with an unmasked allomorph of a stem-homograph (e.g., cierr-a, "he/she/it closes") has an inhibitory effect on target recognition. We report evidence from stem-homograph priming studies that implicate both morphological parsing and lexical selection processes at the lemma level. We argue that stem-homograph inhibition is the product of lexical selection mechanisms that are engaged just when a fully ambiguous stimulus (here, an inflectional stem) must be assigned one of its viable interpretations in order to afford conscious perception of lexical identity.     

Phonological recoding and context

This paper reports an experiment in which lexical decision times for words with irregular spelling-to-sound correspondence (e.g., GAUGE) and matched regular words (e.g., GRILL) were measured under two conditions: priming, in which each target was preceded by a semantically related word, and a control condition, in which each target was preceded by an asterisk. The results showed that lexical decision times were significantly longer for irregular words and that lexical decision times were significantly faster in the priming condition. There was no interaction between these two factors, indicating that these two variables have an additive effect on lexical decision speed. The experiment therefore extends the range of conditions under which word regularity effects can be demonstrated and suggests that the phonological component of the lexical access process is uninfluenced by the provision of semantic context. The nature of regularity effects with regard to lexical decision is also briefly discussed.