Suppression effects in rhyme judgement tasks

Orthographic and phonological similarity were orthogonally manipulated in a rhyme judgement task. The effects were assessed of paced versus very rapid articulatory suppression on subjects' ability to make rhyme judgements when pairs of words were presented either simultaneously or successively. It was found that there were consistent suppression effects on the accuracy of subjects' judgements to visually similar non-rhyming pairs (e.g. “pint-tint”), visually dissimilar rhyming pairs (e.g. “fare-wear”) and visually similar rhyming pairs (e.g. “fall-tall), regardless of mode of presentation or speed of suppression. The size of the suppression effect was greatest for the visually similar non-rhyming word pairs. It was argued that subjects need to carry out a recheck for phonological similarity when word pairs are visually but not phonologically similar, and that encoding the words in articulatory form is particularly beneficial for making accurate rhyme judgements to such pairs.     

工作记忆中的语音回路对汉语阅读理解的影响

语音回路是工作记忆中一个重要的组成部分,主要负责加工和存储语音信息。采用混合实验设计,以正确数和反应时 为指标,汉语语篇为阅读材料,探讨工作记忆中的语音回路对汉语阅读理解的影响。本研究包括两个实验,实验一采用发音抑制的范式,结合错误干扰考察了语音回路中的发音复述装置对汉语阅读理解的影响;实验二采用无关言语的范式,结合错误干扰考察了语音回路中的语音存储装置对汉语阅读理解的影响。结果表明：(1)通过发音抑制和无关言语的方法证明,语音回路中的发音复述装置和语音存储装置在汉语阅读理解中起着重要作用。(2) 字音和字形都影响汉语的阅读理解,但字形比字音起着更大的作用,而且它们的作用机制也不相同,字音直接进入语音存储装置,而字形要经过字音的转换进入语音存储装置。(3) 词频与语音回路有密切关系,语音回路中的发音复述装置的作用在高频词上有明显的表现。(4) 词频与字形、字音也有密切关系,在低频词的条件下,字形的作用大于字音的作用     

Influences of vowel and tone variation on emergent word knowledge: a cross‐linguistic investigation

To learn words, infants must be sensitive to native phonological contrast. While lexical tone predominates as a source of phonemic contrast in human languages, there has been little investigation of the influences of lexical tone on word learning. The present study investigates infants’ sensitivity to tone mispronunciations in two groups of infants. For one group (Chinese learners), tone is phonemic in their native language, and for the second group (English learners), tone is non‐phonemic and constituted suprasegmental variation. In Experiment 1, English learners were trained on novel word–object pairings and tested on their recognition of correct pronunciations, tone and vowel mispronunciations of these words at 18 and 24 months. In Experiment 2a, bilingual English‐Chinese learners were tested on a similar task translated into Chinese at the same age intervals. Results demonstrate that non‐tonal learners treated tonal and vowel substitutions alike as mispronunciations at 18 months but only treated vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at 24 months. Tonal learners treated both tonal and vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at both ages. In Experiment 2b, bilingual non‐tone language learners were tested on the same set of tasks replicating a similar set of results as monolingual non‐tone language learners (Experiment 1). Findings point to an early predisposition to treat tone as a defining characteristic of words regardless of its lexical relevance at 18 months. Between 18 and 24 months, learners appear to ascribe lexical relevance to tone in a language‐specific manner. The current study identifies the influences of tone variation on memories for newly learned words and the time period during which lexical tone – a highly frequent constituent of human languages – actually becomes lexical for early learners. Findings are contextualized with prevailing models of the developing lexicon.     

Does number data entry rely on the phonological loop?

Two experiments investigated effects of articulatory processing on number data entry. Participants entered four‐digit numbers presented as either words or numerals on a keyboard, either under an articulatory condition or in silence. In Experiment 1, the articulatory condition was articulatory suppression; in Experiment 2, it was vocalisation. In Experiment 1, the articulatory suppression group typed initial digits faster than the silent group, but for subsequent digits, the opposite pattern occurred at least with word stimuli. In Experiment 2, the silent group typed initial digits faster but typed subsequent digits somewhat slower than the vocalisation group. Thus, articulation of numbers, which promotes entry into the phonological loop of working memory, retards processing of initial digits but enhances processing of subsequent digits.     

Sign recall by hearing signers: Evidences of dual coding

Deaf participants' sign recall is affected by sign similarity, sign length, irrelevant signing and manual articulatory suppression, suggesting the existence of a phonological loop for signs. In two experiments we explore whether hearing signers (who have learned Spanish Sign Language as second language) use a phonological loop for signs, whether they use their phonological loop for words or whether they use both when recalling sign lists. Articulatory suppression (manual and vocal) and list similarity (word similarity and sign similarity) were manipulated in two experiments. Results clearly suggest that our participants recode orally the signs and use those representations to recall sign lists, but visuospatial information is also used in this task.     

Cross‐Situational Learning of Minimal Word Pairs

Cross‐situational statistical learning of words involves tracking co‐occurrences of auditory words and objects across time to infer word‐referent mappings. Previous research has demonstrated that learners can infer referents across sets of very phonologically distinct words (e.g., WUG, DAX), but it remains unknown whether learners can encode fine phonological differences during cross‐situational statistical learning. This study examined learners’ cross‐situational statistical learning of minimal pairs that differed on one consonant segment (e.g., BON–TON), minimal pairs that differed on one vowel segment (e.g., DEET–DIT), and non‐minimal pairs that differed on two or three segments (e.g., BON–DEET). Learners performed above chance for all pairs, but performed worse on vowel minimal pairs than on consonant minimal pairs or non‐minimal pairs. These findings demonstrate that learners can encode fine phonetic detail while tracking word‐referent co‐occurrence probabilities, but they suggest that phonological encoding may be weaker for vowels than for consonants.     

Cross‐Situational Learning of Phonologically Overlapping Words Across Degrees of Ambiguity

Cross‐situational word learning (XSWL) tasks present multiple words and candidate referents within a learning trial such that word–referent pairings can be inferred only across trials. Adults encode fine phonological detail when two words and candidate referents are presented in each learning trial (2 × 2 scenario; Escudero, Mulak, & Vlach, 2016a ). To test the relationship between XSWL task difficulty and phonological encoding, we examined XSWL of words differing by one vowel or consonant across degrees of within‐learning trial ambiguity (1 × 1 to 4 × 4). Word identification was assessed alongside three distractors. Adults finely encoded words via XSWL: Learning occurred in all conditions, though accuracy decreased across the 1 × 1 to 3 × 3 conditions. Accuracy was highest for the 1 × 1 condition, suggesting fast‐mapping is a stronger learning strategy here. Accuracy was higher for consonant than vowel set targets, and having more distractors from the same set mitigated identification of vowel set targets only, suggesting possible stronger encoding of consonants than vowels.     

Does number data entry rely on the phonological loop?

Two experiments investigated effects of articulatory processing on number data entry. Participants entered four-digit numbers presented as either words or numerals on a keyboard, either under an articulatory condition or in silence. In Experiment 1, the articulatory condition was articulatory suppression; in Experiment 2, it was vocalisation. In Experiment 1, the articulatory suppression group typed initial digits faster than the silent group, but for subsequent digits, the opposite pattern occurred at least with word stimuli. In Experiment 2, the silent group typed initial digits faster but typed subsequent digits somewhat slower than the vocalisation group. Thus, articulation of numbers, which promotes entry into the phonological loop of working memory, retards processing of initial digits but enhances processing of subsequent digits.     

Vowel bias in Danish word‐learning: processing biases are language‐specific

The present study explored whether the phonological bias favoring consonants found in French‐learning infants and children when learning new words (Havy & Nazzi, 2009; Nazzi, 2005) is language‐general, as proposed by Nespor, Peña and Mehler (2003), or varies across languages, perhaps as a function of the phonological or lexical properties of the language in acquisition. To do so, we used the interactive word‐learning task set up by Havy and Nazzi (2009), teaching Danish‐learning 20‐month‐olds pairs of phonetically similar words that contrasted either on one of their consonants or one of their vowels, by either one or two phonological features. Danish was chosen because it has more vowels than consonants, and is characterized by extensive consonant lenition. Both phenomena could disfavor a consonant bias. Evidence of word‐learning was found only for vocalic information, irrespective of whether one or two phonological features were changed. The implication of these findings is that the phonological biases found in early lexical processing are not language‐general but develop during language acquisition, depending on the phonological or lexical properties of the native language.     

The role of phonology during visual word learning in adults: An integrative review

Throughout their lifetime, adults learn new words in their native lannguage, and potentially also in a second language. However, they do so with variable levels of success. In the auditory word learning literature, some of this variability has been attributed to phonological skills, including decoding and phonological short-term memory. Here I examine how the relationship between phonological skills and word learning applies to the visual modality. I define the availability of phonology in terms of (1) the extent to which it is biased by the learning environment, (2) the characteristics of the words to be learned, and (3) individual differences in phonological skills. Across these three areas of research, visual word learning improves when phonology is made more available to adult learners, suggesting that phonology can facilitate learning across modalities. However, the facilitation is largely specific to alphabetic languages, which have predictable sublexical correspondences between orthography and phonology. Therefore, I propose that phonology bootstraps visual word learning by providing a secondary code that constrains and refines developing orthographic representations.

     

Articulatory coding and phonological judgements on written words and pictures: The role of the phonological output buffer

Abstract

The ability of Italian subjects to make phonological judgements was investigated in three experiments. The judgements comprised initial sound similarity and stress assignment on pain of both written words and pictures. Stress assignment on both words and pictures as well as initial sound similarity on pictures required the activation of phonological lexical representations, but this was not necessarily the case for initial sound similarity judgements on word pairs. The first study assessed the effects of concurrent articulatory suppression on the judgements. Experiment 2 used a concomitant task (chewing), which shares with suppression the use of articulatory components but does not involve speech programming and production. The third experiment investigated the effects of unattended speech on the phonological judgements. The results of these three experiments showed that articulatory suppression had a significant disrupting effect on accuracy in all four conditions, while neither articulatory non-speech (chewing) or unattended auditory speech had any effect on the subjects' performance. The results suggest that these phonological judgements involve the operation of an articulatory speech output component, which is not implemented peripherally and does not require the involvement of a non-articulatory input system.     

What Do Second Language Listeners Know About Spoken Words? Effects of Experience and Attention in Spoken Word Processing

With a goal of investigating psycholinguistic bases of spoken word processing in a second language (L2), this study examined L2 learners' sensitivity to phonological information in spoken L2 words as a function of their L2 experience and attentional demands of a learning task. Fifty-two Chinese learners of English who differed in amount of L2 experience (longer vs. shorter residence in L2 environment) were tested in an auditory word priming experiment on well-known L2 words under two processing orientation conditions (semantic, control). Results revealed that, with more L2 experience, learners become more sensitive to phonological detail in spoken L2 words but that attention to word meaning might eliminate this sensitivity, even for learners with more L2 experience.     

The relationships between quantity‐number competencies,working memory,and phonological awareness in 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds

In this study, the interdependencies among phonological awareness, verbal working memory components, and early numerical skills in children 1 year before school entry are addressed. Early numerical skills were conceptualized as quantity‐number competencies (QNC) at both basic (QNC Level 1) and advanced (QNC Level 2) levels. In a sample of 1,343 children aged 5 and 6, structural equation modelling provided support for the isolated number words hypothesis (Krajewski & Schneider, 2009, J. Exp. Child Psychol., 103, 516–531). This hypothesis claims that phonological awareness contributes to the acquisition of QNC Level 1, such as learning the number word sequence, but not of QNC Level 2, which requires the linkage of number words to quantities. In addition, phonological awareness relied on verbal working memory, especially with regard to the phonological loop, central executive, and episodic buffer. The results were congruent with the idea that phonological awareness mediates the impact of verbal working memory on QNCs. The relationships between verbal working memory, phonological awareness, and QNCs were comparable in monolingual and bilingual children.     

Beyond the articulatory loop: A semantic contribution to serial order recall of subspan lists

In two experiments, serial order recall of short lists of content and function words under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions was examined in order to assess the hypotheses that (1) semantic attributes of words contribute to short-term-memory performance, and (2) do soindependently of effects attributable to the articulatory loop component. In Experiment 1, content words were better recalled than function words; both word types were equally impaired by suppression. This provides support for the notion that semantic coding makes an independent contribution to span performance. This word-class effect disappeared in Experiment 2, when content and function words were matched for imageability. These data suggest that at least some aspects of meaning contribute to serial order recall performance for short lists, independently of the articulatory loop.     

Working memory and second language accent acquisition

We explored the proposal that overt repetition of verbal information improves the acquisition of a native accent in a second language. Mandarin‐speaking Chinese learners of English were recorded while repeating and reading out English sentences before and after one of three treatments: (a) repeating native English sentences subvocally, “covert repetition,” (b) repeating sentences out loud, “overt repetition,” and (c) unfilled time of comparable duration. The sentences were rated by English speakers for their nativeness, fluency, and intelligibility. Overt repetition improved accent rating for readout sentences. Covert repetition did not. Neither condition improved accent rating for repeated sentences, suggesting that immediate repetition depends on temporary rather than long‐term representations. Our results provide some support for the use of overt repetition in accent learning. From a theoretical perspective, an interpretation is proposed in terms of a separation between phonological and articulatory coding within the phonological loop component of working memory.     

Articulatory rehearsal and phonological storage in working memory

The theoretical distinction between an articulatory control process and a short-term phonological store was supported in five experiments on immediate serial recall. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the word length effect but not the phonemic similarity effect. In Experiment 2, the two latter effects were found to be independent with auditory presentation. In Experiment 3, the effects of irrelevant speech and word length were found to be independent with visual presentation. In Experiment 4, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the phonemic similarity effect with a slow presentation rate. Nevertheless, in Experiment 5, articulatory suppression with a conventional presentation rate did not reduce the effect of phonemic similarity, even when a 10-sec interval was interposed between presentation and recall. These results indicate that the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of spoken material within the phonological store do not depend on a process of articulatory rehearsal.     

中学生英语词汇记忆的策略训练研究

词汇记忆在中学英语学习中有着举足轻重的地位。本研究从策略入手 ,致力于探索记忆策略训练对英语词汇学习的积极效果。研究者在综合前人的策略分类观点和参照英语词汇学习本身特点的基础上提出了五种基本策略 ,并对之作了训练研究。从训练结果可知 ,这些策略若训练充分得当 ,能大大提高学生的词汇记忆成绩。研究者还对如何在英语词汇学习中运用策略帮助记忆提出了一个粗略的模型。从该模型中 ,我们可以清晰地看到词汇记忆的整个过程 ,以及影响策略选择和使用的各种因素     

Lexicality and phonological similarity: A challenge for the retrieval‐based account of serial recall?

The retrieval‐based account of serial recall () attributes lexicality, phonological similarity, and articulatory suppression effects to a process where long‐term representations are used to reconstruct degraded phonological traces. Two experiments tested this assumption by manipulating these factors in the recall of four‐ and five‐item lists of words and non‐words. Lexicality enhanced item recall (IR), but only affected position accuracy (PA) for five‐item lists under suppression. Phonological similarity influenced both words and non‐words, and produced impaired PA in silent and suppressed conditions. Consistent with the retrieval‐based account, words and non‐words of high word‐likeness appear subject to redintegration. However, some findings, like suppression not reducing the phonological similarity impairment in suppressed conditions, present challenges for the retrieval‐based account and other models of serial recall.     

The homophone effect in semantic access tasks using kanji words: its relation to the articulatory suppression effect

The present study examined whether articulatory suppression influences homophone effects in semantic access tasks using Japanese kanji words. In Experiment 1, participants were required to decide whether visually presented word pairs were synonyms. This experiment replicated the homophone effect observed in previous research that showed more false positive errors in response to nonsynonym homophone pairs than to controls. The present study found that this homophone effect was also obtained under an articulatory suppression condition. In Experiment 2, participants performed a semantic decision task, in which they had to judge whether a visually presented target word was an exemplar of a definition that was shown immediately before presentation of the target word. The homophone effect observed in previous studies was replicated--that is, longer response times and more false positive errors were associated with homophones of correct exemplars than with nonhomophone control words. This homophone effect was also obtained under an articulatory suppression conditions. These results suggest that the phonological processing that produces the homophone effects in semantic access tasks using Japanese kanji words does not include articulatory mechanisms.