Dissociating the influence of familiarity and meaningfulness from word frequency in naming and lexical decision performance

Performance in two experiments was compared on a list of words of high and low frequency in which familiarity/meaningfulness (FM) was balanced and on a list of high- and low-frequency words in which FM was confounded with frequency (i.e., high frequency--high familiarity vs. low frequency--low familiarity). Both repetition and task (lexical decision and naming) were investigated. In the lexical decision task of Experiment 1, both frequency and repetition effects were larger in the list with FM confounded than in the list with FM matched. In the naming task, frequency and repetition effects and their interaction were significant, but there was no influence of FM list context. In Experiment 2, in which the repetitions occurred across blocks, as opposed to randomly intermixed within a list, similar results were found; however, there was no interaction between list and repetition. The results suggest that an evaluation of items in terms of their meaning and familiarity explains a large part of the variance, only in lexical decision. These dimensions may be cued both by subjective feelings of familiarity and the extent to which semantic information is available and by episodic traces due to recent encounters with the item.     

Effects of modality on subjective frequency estimates and processing of spoken and printed words

Previous research (Garber & Pisoni, 1991; Pisoni & Garber, 1990) has demonstrated that subjective familiarity judgments for words are not differentially affected by the modality (visual or auditory) in which the words are presented, suggesting that participants base their judgments on fairly abstract, modality-independent representations in memory. However, in a recent large-scale study in Japanese (Amano, Kondo, & Kakehi, 1995), marked modality effects on familiarity ratings were observed. The present research further examined possible modality differences in subjective ratings and their implications for word recognition. Specially selected words were presented to participants for frequency judgments. In particular, participants were asked how frequently they read, wrote, heard, or said a given spoken or printed word. These ratings were then regressed against processing times in auditory and visual lexical decision and naming tasks. Our results suggest modality dependence for some lexical representations.     

Frequency effects with visual words and syllables in a dyslexic reader

The present study investigated the nature of the inhibitory syllable frequency effect, recently reported for normal readers, in a German-speaking dyslexic patient. The reading impairment was characterized as a severe deficit in naming single letters or words in the presence of spared lexical processing of visual word forms. Three visual lexical decision experiments were conducted with the dyslexic patient, an unimpaired control person matched to the patient and a control group: Experiment 1 manipulated the frequency of words and word-initial syllables and demonstrated systematic effects of both factors in normal readers and in the dyslexic patient. The syllable frequency effect was replicated in a second experiment with a more strictly controlled stimulus set. Experiment 3 confirmed the patient's deficit in activating phonological forms from written words by demonstrating that a pseudohomophone effect as observed in the unimpaired control participants was absent in the dyslexic patient.     

Distinguishing common and task-specific processes in word identification: a matter of some moment?

The same 500 words were presented in 6 different word identification tasks (Experiment 1: lexical decision, semantic categorization, and 3 speeded naming tasks; Experiment 2: delayed naming). Reaction time (RT) distributions were estimated for each task and analyses tested for the effects of word frequency and animacy on various parameters of the RT distribution. Low frequency words yielded more skewed distributions than high frequency words in all tasks except delayed naming. The differential skew was most marked for tasks that required lexical discrimination. The semantic categorization task yielded highly skewed distributions for all words, but the word frequency effect was due to shifts in the location of the RT distributions rather than changes in skew. The results are used to evaluate the relative contributions of a common lexical access process and task-specific processes to performance in lexical discrimination and naming tasks.     

The visual-auditory color-word Stroop asymmetry and its time course

Four experiments examined crossmodal versions of the Stroop task in order (1) to look for Stroop asymmetries in color naming, spoken-word naming, and written-word naming and to evaluate the time course of these asymmetries, and (2) to compare these findings to current models of the Stroop effect. Participants named color patches while ignoring spoken color words presented with an onset varying from 300 msec before to 300 msec after the onset of the color (Experiment 1), or they named the spoken words and ignored the colors (Experiment 2). A secondary visual detection task assured that the participants looked at the colors in both tasks. Spoken color words yielded Stroop effects in color naming, but colors did not yield an effect in spoken-word naming at any stimulus onset asynchrony. This asymmetry in effects was obtained with equivalent color- and spoken-word-naming latencies. Written color words yielded a Stroop effect in naming spoken words (Experiment 3), and spoken color words yielded an effect in naming written words (Experiment 4). These results were interpreted as most consistent with an architectural account of the color-word Stroop asymmetry, in contrast with discriminability and pathway strength accounts.     

Reading Words and Wirds: Phonology and Lexical Access

Naming latency for printed words is inversely related to their frequency. Four experiments were run to test whether the naming of non-words that are homophones of words (pseudohomophones) is similarly influenced by the frequency of those words. McCann and Besner (1987) failed to find such a frequency effect for pseudohomophones when they were presented in a list of non-words. The present studies show that list structure is critical: A frequency effect occurs for pseudohomophones in a list only of homophones and in a list containing words. The list structure effect was found for three different stimulus lists and suggests that lexical access is strategic. If none of the items in a list has a lexical entry, then pronunciation may be the product of a non-lexical process. If all items have a lexical entry that may be accessed orthographically or phonologically, then pronunciation will be the product of a lexical process.     

Naming multisyllabic words

The process of reading multisyllabic words aloud from print was examined in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 used multisyllabic words that vary in terms of the consistency of component spelling-sound correspondences. The stimuli were regular, regular inconsistent, and exception words analogous to the monosyllabic items used in previous studies. Both regular inconsistent and exception words produced longer naming latencies than regular words. In Experiment 2 these differences between word types were found to be limited to lower frequency items. Experiment 3 showed that effects of number of syllables on naming latency are also limited to lower frequency words when the stimulus display forced subjects to use syllabic units. Thus, frequency modulates the effects of two aspects of lexical structure-consistency of spelling-sound correspondences and number of syllables. The results suggest that the naming of multisyllabic words draws on some of the same knowledge representations and processes as monosyllabic words; however, naming does not require syllabic decomposition. The results are discussed in the context of current models of naming.     

Strategies for visual word recognition and orthographical depth: a multilingual comparison

We investigated the psychological reality of the concept of orthographical depth and its influence on visual word recognition by examining naming performance in Hebrew, English, and Serbo-Croatian. We ran three sets of experiments in which we used native speakers and identical experimental methods in each language. Experiment 1 revealed that the lexical status of the stimulus (high-frequency words, low-frequency words, and nonwords) significantly affected naming in Hebrew (the deepest of the three orthographies). This effect was only moderate in English and nonsignificant in Serbo-Croatian (the shallowest of the three orthographies). Moreover, only in Hebrew did lexical status have similar effects on naming and lexical decision performance. Experiment 2 revealed that semantic priming effects in naming were larger in Hebrew than in English and completely absent in Serbo-Croatian. Experiment 3 revealed that a large proportion of nonlexical tokens (nonwords) in the stimulus list affects naming words in Hebrew and in English, but not in Serbo-Croatian. These results were interpreted as strong support for the orthographical depth hypothesis and suggest, in general, that in shallow orthographies phonology is generated directly from print, whereas in deep orthographies phonology is derived from the internal lexicon.     

汉语双字多义词的识别优势效应

采用词汇判断法、命名法考察汉语双字多义词的识别优势效应。结果发现,在词汇判断任务中存在着多义词较单义词的识别优势,但这种识别优势只表现在低频词中。在命名任务中未发现多义词的识别优势。作者根据分布表征模型的观点对双字多义词的识别优势效应做出了可能的解释。     

Vowel duration affects visual word identification: evidence that the mediating phonology is phonetically informed

What form is the lexical phonology that gives rise to phonological effects in visual lexical decision? The authors explored the hypothesis that beyond phonological contrasts the physical phonetic details of words are included. Three experiments using lexical decision and 1 using naming compared processing times for printed words (e.g., plead and pleat) that differ, when spoken, in vowel length and overall duration. Latencies were longer for long-vowel words than for short-vowel words in lexical decision but not in naming. Further, lexical decision on long-vowel words benefited more from identity priming than lexical decision on short-vowel words, suggesting that representations of long-vowel words achieve activation thresholds more slowly. The discussion focused on phonetically informed phonologies, particularly gestural phonology and its potential for understanding reading acquisition and performance.     

Priming on verbal perceptual tests: Roles of lexical,surface, and conceptual processes

According to a lexical-access hypothesis, priming on verbal-completion tests requires previous access to higher-order nodes such as morphemes or words. In two experiments, subjects studied words presented in printed color, either by reading the words or by naming the printed colors. In Experiment 2, some of the words were to be ignored in both study conditions. The words presented in Experiment 2 were either conceptually related or unrelated to each other. And the cues in the test phase for repeated targets were either printed in the studied color or in a different color. In both experiments, the word stems of nouns studied and of new targets were presented with word-completion instructions (implicit test of memory). Consistent with the hypothesis, the amount of priming obtained was greater in the reading than in the color-naming condition. The least amount of priming was observed for targets that were to be ignored at study. In addition, Experiment 2 showed considerable effects of surface similarity (i.e., stronger priming effects with cues whose color was not changed from the study to the test phase) and some effects of conceptual processing, as was indicated by different amounts of priming for unrelated and for related nouns. Because these two effects were observed with both types of study task, it is concluded that perceptual and conceptual processes may make independent contributions to priming effects in verbal perceptual tests. This conclusion modifies and extends the original hypothesis, according to which previous lexical access is required in order to obtain effects of perceptual or conceptual processes on the priming scores.     

The syllable’s role in word naming

In a series of experiments, the masked priming paradigm with very brief prime exposures was used to investigate the role of the syllable in the production of English. Experiment 1 (word naming task) showed a syllable priming effect for English words with clear initial syllable boundaries (such as BALCONY), but no effect with ambisyllabic words targets (such as BALANCE, where the /l/ belongs to both the first and the second syllables). Experiment 2 failed to show such syllable priming effects in the lexical decision task. Experiment 3 demonstrated that for words with clear initial syllable boundaries, naming latencies were faster only when primes formed the first syllable of the target, in comparison with a neutral condition. Experiment 4 showed that the two possible initial syllables of ambisyllabic words facilitated word naming to the same extent, in comparison with the neutral condition. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated that the syllable priming effect obtained for CV words with clear initial syllable boundaries (such as DIVORCE) was not due to increased phonological and/or orthographic overlap. These results, showing that the syllable constitutes a unit of speech production in English, are discussed in relation to the model of phonological and phonetic encoding proposed by Levelt and Wheeldon (1994).     

Phonemic similarity effects and prelexical phonology

Ten experiments were conducted on visually presented Serbo-Croatian words and pseudowords, comprising phonemically similar and dissimilar context-target sequences. There were five main results. First, phonemic similarity effects in both lexical decision and naming are independent of graphemic similarity. Second, phonemic similarity need not facilitate lexical decision; the direction of its effect depends on lexicality, target frequency, and type of similarity (specifically, the position of the phoneme that distinguishes context and target). Third, phonemic similarity expedites the naming of words and pseudowords, and to the same degree. Fourth, phonemic similarity is negated in naming, but not in lexical decision, when the visually presented context and target are stressed differently. Fifth, the phonemic similarity effect occurs even when the context is a masked pseudoword. These results are discussed in terms of a model in which word-processing units are activated routinely by phoneme-processing units, and in which compositionally similar word units, when activated, inhibit one another in proportion to each's familiarity. In this model, the phonemic similarity effect in naming is based on the states of phoneme units, whereas the phonemic similarity effect in lexical decision is based on the states of word units. Overall, the results comport with an account in which phonology is computed prelexically and automatically.     

The subjective familiarity of English homophones

College students rated 828 homophonic words (words with the same pronunciation but different spellings) in terms of subjective familiarity. High interrater reliability was obtained, and the ratings correlated well with other published familiarity measures (r=.85). The familiarity ratings also correlated highly with log transforms of Ku?era and Francis’s (1967) printed frequency measures (r= 75). However, many words of equal log frequency varied widely in rated familiarity, and vice versa. To determine which of these two factors was the better predictor of verbal performance, we orthogonally varied the two in a lexical decision task and found that, for words of moderate frequency, rated familiarity was by far the better predictor. We conclude that even though printed frequency and rated familiarity generally covary, printed frequency is a less reliable index of the underlying psychological construct, word familiarity.     

Eye movements,word familiarity,and vocabulary acquisition

Two experiments examined the effects of word familiarity on word recognition and text comprehension during silent reading. Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing words that varied in familiarity as assessed by printed estimates of word frequency, subjective ratings of familiarity, and a multiple‐choice test of meaning knowledge. Effects of word frequency were unaffected by differences in subjective familiarity rating for high frequency words. Differential effects of familiarity rating were observed in low frequency conditions. In addition, processing time on high and low frequency words did not differ when familiarity was held constant for moderately familiar words. Readers spent more initial processing time on novel words than familiar words. Performance on a vocabulary test administered after the reading session demonstrated that readers successfully acquired and retained new word meanings. Finally, reanalysis of word processing time as a function of vocabulary test performance demonstrated a systematic relationship between online processing patterns and memory for novel word meaning.     

Rapid naming is affected by association but not by syntax

Three experiments are reported that focused on the grammatical and associative relationship between a single-word context and a to-be-named target in the Serbo-Croatian language. Unlike in studies using the English language, word class need not be violated in order to obtain grammatical incongruency: all word pairs, therefore, can be semantically plausible. Experiment 1 contrasted naming with lexical decision using associative and grammatical priming, a replication of Seidenberg, Waters, Sanders, and Langer’s (1984) study. With associative priming, both lexical decision and naming were facilitated significantly, but with grammatical priming, only lexical decision was affected significantly. Heeding observations of West and Stanovich (1986), in Experiment 2 we used stimuli known to produce a robust grammatical congruency effect on lexical decision (130 msec) and a procedure designed to slow naming latencies. Again, no grammatical congruency effect for naming was obtained. Finally, because Experiment 1, which used a row of Xs as the neutral context, showed an associative priming effect on naming pseudowords, Experiment 3 used a neutral context that was linguistic. An associative priming effect was found for words but not for pseudowords. Results were discussed in terms of pre- and postlexical loci of contextual effects.     

Reading and lexicalization in opaque and transparent orthographies: Word naming and word learning in English and Spanish

Do skilled readers of opaque and transparent orthographies make differential use of lexical and sublexical processes when converting words from print to sound? Two experiments are reported, which address that question, using effects of letter length on naming latencies as an index of the involvement of sublexical letter–sound conversion. Adult native speakers of English (Experiment 1) and Spanish (Experiment 2) read aloud four- and seven-letter high-frequency words, low-frequency words, and nonwords in their native language. The stimuli were interleaved and presented 10 times in a first testing session and 10 more times in a second session 28 days later. Effects of lexicality were observed in both languages, indicating the deployment of lexical representations in word naming. Naming latencies to both words and nonwords reduced across repetitions on Day 1, with those savings being retained to Day 28. Length effects were, however, greater for Spanish than English word naming. Reaction times to long and short nonwords converged with repeated presentations in both languages, but less in Spanish than in English. The results support the hypothesis that reading in opaque orthographies favours the rapid creation and use of lexical representations, while reading in transparent orthographies makes more use of a combination of lexical and sublexical processing.     

The role of subsyllabic structure in lexical access to printed words

Summary Three lexical-decision experiments investigated whether the subsyllabic structure of words is processed in the course of lexical access to printed words. Experiment 1 contrasted Italian words with same orthographic structure, but different subsyllabic structures. Latencies were shorter and error rates lower for words with a syllabic structure composed of fewer subsyllabic constituents. Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility that the results of Experiment 1 were due to differences in the frequency of bigrams composing the items. Bigram frequency had no effect on words of the same frequency as that of words in Experiment 1. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that it is not the number of subsyllabic constituents that affects lexical decision — rather the internal composition and frequency of the subsyllabic structure underlying a word. These results suggest that the subsyllabic structure of words is represented in abstract form in the mental lexicon and processed during lexical access. Subsyllabic structures, which are simpler and more common in the language, are more easily activated and processed, regardless of the number of subsyllabic constituents and the number of syllables composing the word.     

Do handwritten words magnify lexical effects in visual word recognition?

An examination of how the word recognition system is able to process handwritten words is fundamental to formulate a comprehensive model of visual word recognition. Previous research has revealed that the magnitude of lexical effects (e.g., the word-frequency effect) is greater with handwritten words than with printed words. In the present lexical decision experiments, we examined whether the quality of handwritten words moderates the recruitment of top-down feedback, as reflected in word-frequency effects. Results showed a reading cost for difficult-to-read and easy-to-read handwritten words relative to printed words. But the critical finding was that difficult-to-read handwritten words, but not easy-to-read handwritten words, showed a greater word-frequency effect than printed words. Therefore, the inherent physical variability of handwritten words does not necessarily boost the magnitude of lexical effects.     

The influence of visualization of orthography on the recognition of written words]

This paper reviews the main research that has been conducted on the role of orthographic neighbourhood in visual word recognition. We focus here on the traditionally defined neighbourhood, that is corresponding to the set of words of the same length sharing all but one letter with the stimulus. Two major theoretical frameworks, namely the activation verification and the interactive activation models, assume that orthographic neighbours are activated when a written word is presented. Predictions formulated by both models for words and pseudowords on the effects of neighbourhood size (N), neighbourhood frequency (NF), and neighbourhood distribution (P), are examined in order to assess the plausibility of serial versus interactive processes. Findings from 27 empirical studies including more than 80 experiments suggest that neighbourhood effects depend on the neighbourhood indexes (N, NF, and P), on the particular tasks (lexical decision, naming, semantic categorization, perceptual identification, and reading), and on the languages (English, French, Spanish, and Dutch) that are used. The results for words can be summarized as follows: (1) In the lexical decision task, the N effect is facilitatory. The NF effect is rather inhibitory, particularly in French and Spanish experiments. The P effect is rather inhibitory in English studies, whereas the P effect for higher frequency neighbours is facilitatory in French. (2) In the perceptual identification task with a single identification response, N and NF effects are inhibitory whatever the language. (3) In the naming task, N and NF effects are facilitatory whatever the language. (4) In the semantic categorization task, an interaction effect between N and NF is found in both English and Spanish. (5) In eye movement studies, the NF effect is inhibitory in both English and French. The issue of lexical versus task-specific processes underlying neighbourhood effects in lexical identification tasks is also examined. On the whole, facilitatory N effects are usually attributed to nonlexical processes of the lexical decision task and of the naming task, whereas inhibitory neighbourhood frequency effects are usually attributed to lexical processes, at least in lexical-decision experiments and in eye-movement studies on normal reading. The distribution of higher frequency neighbours which is found to have a facilitatory effect on French words in lexical-decision experiments can be attributed to lexical processes in the interactive activation framework. The theoretical implications of the data are discussed in light of the original activation verification and interactive activation models and in recently extended versions of these models. We conclude that the lexical inhibition hypothesis which is central in the interactive activation framework is the most appropriate to account for the role of orthographic neighbourhoods in visual word recognition.