Visual word recognition in bilinguals: evidence from masked phonological priming

Bilingual written language representation was investigated with the masked phonological priming paradigm. Pseudohomophonic and control primes of French target words were used to show that Dutch-French bilinguals exhibit the same pattern of phonological and orthographic priming as native French speakers, which suggests that the same processes underlie first-and second-language processing. It was also found that for bilinguals, but not monolinguals, it is possible to prime a target word of the second language with a homophonic stimulus (either word or nonword) of the first language. This interlingual phonological priming effect was of the same size as the intralingual priming effect. Implications for theories of bilingual written language representation and for the interpretation of the masked phonological priming paradigm are discussed.     

A study of masked form priming in picture and word naming

We report a series of picture- and word-naming experiments in which the masked priming paradigm with prime exposures brief enough to prevent prime identification were used. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the prior presentation of the same word prime facilitates both picture and word naming independently of target frequency. In Experiments 2 and 3, primes that were pseudohomophones of picture targets produced facilitatory effects compared with orthographic controls, but these orthographically similar nonword primes did not facilitate picture naming compared with unrelated controls. On the other hand, word targets were primarily facilitated by orthographic prime— target overlap. This marked dissociation in the priming effects obtained with picture and word targets is discussed in relation to different explanations of masked form priming effects in visual word recognition and current models of picture and word naming.     

Morphological processing during visual word recognition in developing readers: evidence from masked priming

Masked priming studies with adult readers have provided evidence for a form-based morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism that "blindly" decomposes any word with the appearance of morphological complexity. The present studies investigated whether evidence for structural morphological decomposition can be obtained with developing readers. We used a masked primed lexical decision design first adopted by Rastle, Davis, and New (2004), comparing truly suffixed (golden-GOLD) and pseudosuffixed (mother-MOTH) prime-target pairs with nonsuffixed controls (spinach-SPIN). Experiment 1 tested adult readers, showing that priming from both pseudo- and truly suffixed primes could be obtained using our own set of high-frequency word materials. Experiment 2 assessed a group of Year 3 and Year 5 children, but priming only occurred when prime and target shared a true morphological relationship, and not when the relationship was pseudomorphological. This pattern of results indicates that morpho-orthographic decomposition mechanisms do not become automatized until a relatively late stage in reading development.     

The masked onset priming effect in picture naming

Reading aloud is faster when targets (e.g., PAIR) are preceded by visually masked primes sharing just the onset (e.g., pole) compared to all different primes (e.g., take). This effect is known as the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). One crucial feature of this effect is its presumed non-lexical basis. This aspect of the MOPE is tested in the current study. Dutch participants named pictures having bisyllabic names, which were preceded by visually masked primes. Picture naming was facilitated by first-segment but not last-segment primes, and by first-syllable as well as last-syllable primes. Whole-word primes with first or last segment overlap slowed down picture naming latencies significantly. The first-segment priming effect (i.e., MOPE) cannot be accounted for by non-lexical response competition since pictures cannot be named via the non-lexical route. Instead, the effects obtained in this study can be accommodated by a speech-planning account of the MOPE.     

Unconscious cognition isn't that smart: modulation of masked repetition priming effect in the word naming task

Masked repetition primes produce greater facilitation in naming in a block containing a high, rather than low proportion of repetition trials. [Bodner, G. E., & Masson, M. E. J. (2004). Beyond binary judgments: Prime-validity modulates masked repetition priming in the naming task. Memory & Cognition, 32, 1-11] suggested this phenomenon reflects a strategic shift in the use of masked prime as a function of its validity. We propose an alternative explanation based on the Adaptation to the statistics of the environment (ASE) framework, which suggests the proportion effect reflects adaptation of response-initiation processes to recent trial difficulty. Consistent with ASE's prediction, (1) stimuli that produce the proportion effect also produced an "asymmetric blocking effect", showing a smaller fall in response latencies of hard items than the rise of easy items when the two item types were intermixed relative to pure blocks comprised of only one item type, and (2) manipulation of prime validity was neither necessary nor sufficient to modulate the size of masked-priming effect.     

The left-to-right nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming

Two experiments were performed to investigate the nature of the masked onset priming effect in naming, that is, the facilitation in naming latency that is observed when a target shares the initial grapheme/phoneme with a masked prime. Experiment 1 showed that the effect is not due to position-independent letter priming, since the naming of nonword targets preceded by masked primes was facilitated only if the prime shared the initial letter with the target (e.g., suf-SIB) and not if the prime shared the final letter (e.g., mub-SIB). Experiment 2 showed that the effect reflects the sharing of onsets rather than the initial letter, since facilitation due to an overlap of the initial letter was observed only for the simple onset target (e.g., penny-PASTE) for which the letter corresponded to the onset, and not for complex onset targets (e.g., bingo-BLISS). It is argued that the serial nature of the masked onset priming effect is best interpreted as the planning of articulation, rather than as the computation of phonology from orthography.     

Naming two-digit arabic numerals: evidence from masked priming studies

The authors investigated how 2-digit Arabic numerals are named by looking at the effects of masked primes on the naming latencies. Target numerals were named faster when prime and target shared a digit at the same position (e.g., the target 28 primed by 18 and 21). In contrast, naming latencies were slower when prime and target shared 1 or 2 digits at non-corresponding places (e.g., the target 28 primed by 82, 86, or 72). Subsequent experiments showed that these priming effects were situated at the level of the verbal production of the Arabic numerals. The data point to a non-semantically mediated route from visual input to verbal output in the naming of 2-digit Arabic numerals.     

Early morphological decomposition during visual word recognition: Evidence from masked transposed-letter priming

The present experiments were designed to explore the theory of early morpho-orthographic segmentation (Rastle, Davis, & New, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11,1090–1098, 2004), which postulates that written words with a true morphologically complex structure (cleaner) and those with a morphological pseudostructure (corner) are both decomposed into affix and stem morphemes. We used masked complex transposed-letter (TL) nonword primes in a lexical decision task. Experiment 1 replicated the well-known masked TL-priming effect using monomorphemic nonword primes (e.g., wran–WARN). Experiment 2 used the same nonword TL stems as in Experiment 1, but combined them with real suffixes (e.g., ish as in wranish–WARN). Priming was compared with that from nonsuffixed primes in which the real suffixes were replaced with nonmorphemic endings (e.g., el as in wranel–WARN). Significant priming was found in the suffixed but not in the nonsuffixed condition, suggesting that affix-stripping occurs at prelexical stages in visual word recognition and operates over early letter-position encoding mechanisms.     

Phonology and orthography in visual word recognition: Evidence from masked non-word priming

Three lexical decision experiments in French investigated the effects of briefly presented forward-masked non-word primes on latencies to phonologically and/or orthographically related targets. At 64-msec prime presentation durations, primes that are pseudohomophones of the target produced facilitatory effects compared to orthographic controls, but these orthographically similar non-word primes did not facilitate target recognition compared to unrelated controls. These results were obtained independently of target word frequency and independently of the presence or absence of pseudohomophone targets in the experimental lists. With a 32-msec prime duration, on the other hand, pseudohomophone and orthographic primes had similar effects on target recognition, both producing facilitation relative to unrelated controls. The results are discussed in terms of the time course of phonological and orthographic code activation in the processing of pronounceable strings of letters.     

Self-reference is a fast-acting automatic mechanism on emotional word processing: evidence from a masked priming affective categorisation task

This study examined the impact of self-referential information at early stages of emotional word processing using an affective masked-priming paradigm in which positive (e.g, espetacular[awesome]) and negative (e.g., horrível[awful]) trait-adjectives were preceded by briefly primes that could be self-related (Eu sou[I am]), other-related (Ela é[She is]), or a control (%%%%%). Trait-adjectives were selected from female norms and only females participants were used to control for sex differences. Results showed that positive words were categorised faster when preceded by self-related primes than by other-related primes, though not control primes. Negative trait-adjectives were not modulated by the type of prime, even though participants were slower when they were preceded by other-related than by control primes. These findings demonstrate that taking the other-perspective entails a cost, and that the amount of priming produced by self-related and control primes was virtually the same, thus suggesting that assuming the self-perspective is a cognitively effortless process.     

Phonological mediation in visual masked priming: evidence from phonotactic repair

In a series of 4 experiments, the authors show that phonological repair mechanisms, known to operate in the auditory modality, are directly translated in the visual modality. This holds with the provision that printed stimuli are presented for a very brief duration and that the effect of phonological repair is tested after a delay of some 100 ms has elapsed after that presentation. The case of phonological repair chosen to exemplify the parallelism between print and speech is the prosthesis of /e/ in utterances beginning with /s/ followed by a consonant in Spanish. Native speakers of Spanish hear a prothetic /e/ in auditorily presented pseudowords such as special (/speojal/, derived from "especial") as well as stuto (/stuto/, derived from "astuto"). It is shown here that they also hear that same vowel /e/ when presented with the printed pseudowords "special" and "stuto." This finding of a phonological repair effect in print has implications for the issue of phonological activation from print, as well as for the prelexical locus and mandatory nature of phonological repair mechanisms in general.     

A functional disconnection between spoken and visual word recognition: evidence from unconscious priming.

The goal of the present study is to assess whether there is an automatic and obligatory activation of the phonological lexicon upon the presentation of a written word under unconscious processing conditions. We use a cross-modal version of the masked repetition priming procedure introduced by Forster and Davis (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 10 (1984) 680) which consists of priming a spoken word by its written equivalent under masked conditions. These trials are randomly mixed with within-modal (visual-visual) repetition priming control trials. Our results show that cross-modal priming effects are absent unless primes are consciously perceived, as assessed by d' scores obtained with a letter/pseudo discrimination task. In contrast, priming effects within the written modality are observed under conscious as well as unconscious processing conditions. We conclude that the systems underlying written and spoken word processing are, respectively, autonomous and connected only under conscious conditions.     

Bias in masked word identification: unconscious influences of repetition priming

The beneficial influence of a prior study episode on subsequent identification of a word includes a large bias component, revealed in the forced-choice variant of the masked word identification test. In that type of test, subjects show a preference for a studied probe over a nonstudied probe, regardless of which one matches the masked target word. The forced-choice test was used in the present experiments to test the possibility that this bias effect is due to conscious recollection. Results show that bias was strongly attenuated (1) by changes in modality between study and test, and (2) under certain conditions, by using a conceptually driven study task. The bias effect was found only when probes were orthographically similar to one another, as predicted by the counter model (Ratcliff & McKoon, 1997). These results provide strong evidence that the bias effect is not mediated by conscious recollection.     

Perceptual awareness and categorical representation of faces: evidence from masked priming

How internal categories influence how we perceive the world is a fundamental question in cognitive sciences. Yet, the relation between perceptual awareness and perceptual categorization has remained largely uncovered so far. Here, we addressed this question by focusing on face perception during subliminal and conscious perception. We used morphed continua between two face identities and we assessed, through a masked priming paradigm, the perceptual processing of these morphed faces under subliminal and supraliminal conditions. We found that priming from subliminal faces followed linearly the information present in the primes, while priming from visible faces revealed a non-linear profile, indicating a categorical processing of face identities. Our results thus point to a special relation between perceptual awareness and categorical processing of faces, and support the dissociation between two modes of information processing: a subliminal mode involving analog treatment of stimuli information, and a supraliminal mode relying on discrete representation.     

Perception as evidence accumulation and Bayesian inference: insights from masked priming

The authors argue that perception is Bayesian inference based on accumulation of noisy evidence and that, in masked priming, the perceptual system is tricked into treating the prime and the target as a single object. Of the 2 algorithms considered for formalizing how the evidence sampled from a prime and target is combined, only 1 was shown to be consistent with the existing data from the visual word recognition literature. This algorithm was incorporated into the Bayesian Reader model (D. Norris, 2006), and its predictions were confirmed in 3 experiments. The experiments showed that the pattern of masked priming is not a fixed function of the relations between the prime and the target but can be changed radically by changing the task from lexical decision to a same-different judgment. Implications of the Bayesian framework of masked priming for unconscious cognition and visual masking are discussed.     

Semantic effects in word naming: Evidence from English and Japanese Kanji

Three experiments investigated whether reading aloud is affected by a semantic variable, imageability. The first two experiments used English, and the third experiment used Japanese Kanji as a way of testing the generality of the findings across orthographies. The results replicated the earlier findings that readers were slower and more error prone in reading low-frequency exception words when they were low in imageability than when they were high in imageability (Strain, Patterson, & Seidenberg, 1995). This result held for both English and Kanji even when age of acquisition was taken into account as a possible confounding variable, and the imageability effect was stronger in Kanji compared to English.     

Links between conscious awareness and response inhibition: evidence from masked priming

Recent results from “subliminal priming” experiments have shown that masked prime stimuli which can not be consciously perceived can trigger response activation processes, but that these response activations can later be subject to inhibition. Links between conscious awareness and response inhibition were investigated by manipulating the visibility of masked prime stimuli, from clearly visible primes to prime stimuli that were inaccessible to conscious perception. Response inhibition was observed with unperceived prime stimuli, but not for suprathreshold primes. Correlations between individual prime identification thresholds and the onset of response inhibition indicate that the absence or presence of conscious awareness can predict whether or not response inhibition is elicited. These results demonstrate qualitative differences in the effects of conscious and unconscious information. It is argued that response facilitation produced by consciously available perceptual information can counteract automatic effects of self-inhibitory motor control circuits.     

Novel word integration in the mental lexicon: Evidence from unmasked and masked semantic priming

We sought to establish whether novel words can become integrated into existing semantic networks by teaching participants new meaningful words and then using these new words as primes in two semantic priming experiments, in which participants carried out a lexical decision task to familiar words. Importantly, at no point in training did the novel words co-occur with the familiar words that served as targets in the primed lexical decision task, allowing us to evaluate semantic priming in the absence of direct association. We found that familiar words were primed by the newly related novel words, both when the novel word prime was unmasked (Experiment 1) and when it was masked (Experiment 2), suggesting that the new words had been integrated into semantic memory. Furthermore, this integration was strongest after a 1-week delay and was independent of explicit recall of the novel word meanings: Forgetting of meanings did not attenuate priming. We argue that even after brief training, newly learned words become an integrated part of the adult mental lexicon rather than being episodically represented separately from the lexicon.     

The masked priming toolbox: an open-source MATLAB toolbox for masked priming researchers

The Masked Priming Toolbox is an open-source collection of MATLAB functions that utilizes the free third-party PsychToolbox-3 (PTB3: Brainard, Spatial Vision, 10, 433-436, 1997; Kleiner, Brainard & Pelli, Perception, 36, 2007; Pelli, Spatial Vision, 10, 437-442, 1997). It is designed to allow a researcher to run masked (and unmasked) priming experiments using a variety of response devices (including keyboards, graphics tablets and force transducers). Very little knowledge of MATLAB is required; experiments are generated by creating a text file with the required parameters, and raw and analyzed data are output to Excel (as well as MATLAB) files for further analysis. The toolbox implements a variety of stimuli for use as primes and targets, as well as a variety of masks. Timing, size, location, and orientation of stimuli are all parameterizable. The code is open-source and made available on the Web under a Creative Commons License.