Phonology is fundamental in skilled reading: Evidence from ERPs

Research consistently indicates the importance of phonological processing in early reading development, yet the role of phonology in skilled reading is still not well understood. Two event-related potential (ERP) experiments investigated the nature and time course of phonological processing during skilled visual word recognition using a masked priming paradigm. Phonological syllable priming was examined by presenting prime-target pairs either with the same first syllable, or with one letter more or fewer. In this visually matched design, items like po## -PONY and pon### -PONDER appeared in the congruent condition. Conversely, pon# -PONY and po#### -PONDER appeared in the incongruent condition. In both experiments, the magnitude of the first negative peak (N1) was reduced in the phonologically congruent condition as compared to the incongruent condition. This syllable congruency effect is the first neurophysiological evidence for phonological syllable activation in the initial moments of visual word recognition. The early time course of this activation indicates that suprasegmental phonological processing is fundamental to skilled reading.     

Vowel processing during silent reading: evidence from eye movements

Two eye movement experiments examined whether skilled readers include vowels in the early phonological representations used in word recognition during silent reading. Target words were presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews in which the vowel phoneme was concordant or discordant with the vowel phoneme in the target word. In Experiment 1, the orthographic vowel differed from the target in both the concordant and discordant preview conditions. In Experiment 2, the vowel letters in the preview were identical to those in the target word. The phonological vowel was ambiguous, however, and the final consonants of the previews biased the vowel phoneme either toward or away from the target's vowel phoneme. In both experiments, shorter reading times were observed for targets preceded by concordant previews than by discordant previews. Implications for models of word recognition are discussed.     

Lexical priming from partial-word previews

Two naming and two lexical decision experiments examined the use of partial-word preview in visual word recognition. Replicating results of an earlier reading study, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 revealed significant benefits from position-specific beginning- and ending-letter previews. Furthermore, benefits from beginning letters were greater for words than for pseudowords. Ending-letter previews showed no corresponding lexical superiority. Experiment 3 revealed that preview of position-specific letters from the beginning plus the ending part of target stimuli, which did not reveal a unique word-beginning letter sequence, facilitated the classification of words but not pseudowords. The results support a two-route model of lexical access in which some partial-word previews afford activation of specific lexical representations, and some partial-word previews afford activation of subword representations.     

Specifying theories of developmental dyslexia: a diffusion model analysis of word recognition

The nature of word recognition difficulties in developmental dyslexia is still a topic of controversy. We investigated the contribution of phonological processing deficits and uncertainty to the word recognition difficulties of dyslexic children by mathematical diffusion modeling of visual and auditory lexical decision data. The first study showed that poor visual lexical decision performance of reading disabled children was mainly due to a delay in the evaluation of word characteristics, suggesting impaired phonological processing. The adoption of elevated certainty criteria by the disabled readers suggests that uncertainty contributed to the visual word recognition impairments as well. The second study replicated the outcomes for visual lexical decision with formally diagnosed dyslexic children. In addition, during auditory lexical decision, dyslexics presented with reduced accuracy, which also resulted from delayed evaluation of word characteristics. Since orthographic influences are diminished during auditory lexical decision, this strengthens the phonological processing deficit account. Dyslexic children did not adopt heightened certainty criteria during auditory lexical decision, indicating that uncertainty solely impairs reading and not listening.     

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.     

The processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition: typicality effects and orthographic correlates

Many studies that have examined reading at the single-word level have been restricted to the processing of monosyllabic stimuli, and, as a result, lexical stress has not been widely investigated. In the experiments reported here, we used disyllabic words and nonwords to investigate the processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found an effect of stress typicality in naming and lexical decision. Typically stressed words (trochaic nouns and iambic verbs) elicited fewer errors than atypically stressed words (iambic nouns and trochaic verbs). In Experiment 3, we carried out an analysis of 340 word endings and found clear orthographic correlates of both grammatical category and lexical stress in word endings. In Experiment 4, we demonstrated that readers are sensitive to these cues in their processing of nonwords during two tasks: sentence construction and stress assignment. We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to psycholinguistic models of single-word reading.     

The processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition: Typicality effects and orthographic correlates

Many studies that have examined reading at the single-word level have been restricted to the processing of monosyllabic stimuli, and, as a result, lexical stress has not been widely investigated. In the experiments reported here, we used disyllabic words and nonwords to investigate the processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found an effect of stress typicality in naming and lexical decision. Typically stressed words (trochaic nouns and iambic verbs) elicited fewer errors than atypically stressed words (iambic nouns and trochaic verbs). In Experiment 3, we carried out an analysis of 340 word endings and found clear orthographic correlates of both grammatical category and lexical stress in word endings. In Experiment 4, we demonstrated that readers are sensitive to these cues in their processing of nonwords during two tasks: sentence construction and stress assignment. We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to psycholinguistic models of single-word reading.     

Phonological Regularities and Grammatical Gender Retrieval in Spoken Word Recognition and Word Production

Two experiments investigate whether native speakers of French can use a noun’s phonological ending to retrieve its gender and that of a gender-marked element. In Experiment 1, participants performed a gender decision task on the noun’s gender-marked determiner for auditorily presented nouns. Noun endings with high predictive values were selected. The noun stimuli could either belong to the gender class predicted by their ending (congruent) or they could belong to the gender class that was different from the predicted gender (incongruent). Gender decisions were made significantly faster for congruent nouns than for incongruent nouns, relative to a (lexical decision) baseline task. In Experiment 2, participants named pictures of the same materials as used in Experiment 1 with noun phrases consisting of a gender-marked determiner, a gender-marked adjective and a noun. In this Experiment, no effect of congruency, relative to a (bare noun naming) baseline task, was observed. Thus, the results show an effect of phonological information on the retrieval of gender-marked elements in spoken word recognition, but not in word production.     

The Use of Lexical Prosody for Lexical Access of the Japanese Language

It has been suggested that English listeners do not use lexical prosody for lexical access in word recognition. The present study was designed to examine whether this argument could be generalized to the Japanese language. Two experiments using a cross-modal priming task were conducted. The participants made a lexical decision regarding a visual target following an auditory prime that was either the prosodically congruent or incongruent homophone of the target. In experiment 1, the primes were presented as complete words, and in experiment 2, they were presented as word fragments. In both experiments, the priming effects were observed only in the congruent condition. These results suggest that the prime activated only the representations of prosodically congruent words. We therefore concluded that Japanese listeners use lexical prosody for lexical access of their language and that the role of lexical prosody is determined language-specifically.     

Cross-modal priming evidence for phonology-to-orthography activation in visual word recognition

Subjects were asked to indicate which item of a word/nonword pair was a word. On critical trials the nonword was a pseudohomophone of the word. RTs of dyslexics were shorter in blocks of trials in which a congruent auditory prime was simultaneously presented with the visual stimuli. RTs of normal readers were longer for high frequency words when there was auditory priming. This provides evidence that phonology can activate orthographic representations; the size and direction of the effect of auditory priming on visual lexical decision appear to be a function of the relative speeds with which sight and hearing activate orthography.     

Processing segmental and prosodic information in Cantonese word production

Five experiments were conducted to investigate how subsyllabic, syllabic, and prosodic information is processed in Cantonese monosyllabic word production. A picture-word interference task was used in which a target picture and a distractor word were presented simultaneously or sequentially. In the first 3 experiments with visually presented distractors, null effects on naming latencies were found when the distractor and the picture name shared the onset, the rhyme, the tone, or both the onset and tone. However, significant facilitation effects were obtained when the target and the distractor shared the rhyme + tone (Experiment 2), the segmental syllable (Experiment 3), or the syllable + tone (Experiment 3). Similar results were found in Experiments 4 and 5 with spoken rather than visual distractors. Moreover, a significant facilitation effect was observed in the rhyme-related condition in Experiment 5, and this effect was not affected by the degree of phonological overlap between the target and the distractor. These results are interpreted in an interactive model, which allows feedback sending from the subsyllabic to the lexical level during the phonological encoding stage in Cantonese word production.     

词素位置概率在中文阅读中的作用：词汇判断和眼动研究

中文词切分的认知机制一直是心理语言学关注的焦点问题之一,研究发现中文读者可使用词素位置概率等语言学线索帮助词切分,而首、尾词素位置概率的重要程度以往研究观点并不一致。本研究通过词汇判断和眼动实验,考察中文读者对首、尾词素位置概率的利用情况。实验1a和1b采用词汇判断任务,考察在不同词频条件下词首与词尾词素位置概率对词汇识别的影响。在错误率和反应时指标上,高频词条件下词首与词尾词素位置概率效应不显著;低频词条件下词首词素位置概率效应显著,词尾词素位置概率效应不显著。实验2a和2b采用句子阅读任务,考察在自然阅读情境中被试对词素位置概率的运用。在凝视时间、回视路径时间和总注视时间指标上,低频词条件下词首词素位置概率效应显著,词尾词素位置概率效应不显著。高频词条件下词首与词尾词素位置概率效应均不显著。词汇判断和眼动证据共同表明,词素位置概率信息是中文读者重要的语言词切分线索,且与词尾词素位置概率相比,词首词素位置概率在词汇切分与识别过程中发挥的作用更大。同时,词素位置概率线索的运用会受到词频的影响,研究结果支持复合词加工的混合通达表征模型。     

Automatic phonological coding of unattended printed words

A lexical decision response to an attended printed word can be slowed when the word is accompanied by an unattended word that is semantically related. Does this hold for an unattended word that is not related to the target word but sounds as if it is? The homophone WASTE can be shown to affect the lexical decision response to RUBBISH, but how does the incongruently related homophone WAIST affect RUBBISH? If incongruent homophones of words related to the attended word can influence processing when they are not being attended to, then it must be through automatic processing into a phonological code, either before or after lexical access. Experiment 1 reports such an effect, and it is concluded that a phonological representation is generated preattentively and influences the semantic processing of the attended word after generation of that representation. Experiment 2 confirms the effect and investigates the possibility that the effect exists because of the strategic use of phonological encoding of attended words. To discourage the use of a phonological strategy for lexical access, all nonwords were pseudohomophones. The influence persisted, however, with attended words still being affected by the presence of incongruent homophones of related words.     

Basic processes in reading: can functional phonological recoding be blocked?

A widely held view is that phonological processing is always involved in lexical access from print, and is automatic in that it cannot be prevented. This claim was assessed in the context of a priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, repetition priming was observed for both pseudohomophone-word pairs (e.g., brane-brain) and morphologically related word pairs (e.g., marked-mark) in the context of lexical decision. In Experiment 2, subjects searched the prime for the presence of a target letter and then made a lexical decision to a subsequent letter string. Phonological priming from a pseudohomophone was eliminated following letter search of the prime, whereas morphological priming persisted. These results are inconsistent with the claim that a) lexical access from print requires preliminary phonological processing, and b) functional phonological processing cannot be blocked. They are, however, consistent with the conclusion that, for intact skilled readers, lexical access can be accomplished on the basis of orthographic processing alone. These results join a growing body of evidence supporting the claim that there exist numerous points in visual word recognition at which processing can be stopped.     

Automatic activation of phonological information in reading: Evidence from the semantic relatedness decision task

A semantic relatedness decision task was used to investigate whether phonological recoding occurs automatically and whether it mediates lexical access in visual word recognition and reading. In this task, subjects read a pair of words and decided whether they were related or unrelated in meaning. In Experiment 1, unrelated word-homophone pairs (e.g., LION-BARE) and their visual controls (e.g., LION-BEAN) as well as related word pairs (e.g., FISH-NET) were presented. Homophone pairs were more likely to be judged as related or more slowly rejected as unrelated than their control pairs, suggesting phonological access of word meanings. In Experiment 2, word-pseudohomophone pairs (e.g., TABLE-CHARE) and their visual controls (e.g., TABLE-CHARK) as well as related and unrelated word pairs were presented. Pseudohomophone pairs were more likely to be judged as related or more slowly rejected as unrelated than their control pairs, again suggesting automatic phonological recoding in reading.     

The Effect of Phonological Structure on Visual Word Access in Bilinguals

Two experiments examined if visual word access varies cross-linguistically by studying Spanish/English adult bilinguals, priming two syllable CVCV words both within (Experiment 1) and across (Experiment 2) syllable boundaries in the two languages. Spanish readers accessed more first syllables based on within syllable primes compared to English readers. In contrast, syllable-based primes helped English readers recognize more words than in Spanish, suggesting that experienced English readers activate a larger unit in the initial stages of word recognition. Primes spanning the syllable boundary affected readers of both languages in similar ways. In this priming context, primes that did not span the syllable boundary helped Spanish readers recognize more syllables, while English readers identified more words, further confirming the importance of the syllable in Spanish and suggesting a larger unit in English. Overall, the experiments provide evidence that readers use different units in accessing words in the two languages.     

What's in a word? A parametric study of semantic influences on visual word recognition

To what extent does semantic information play a functional role in visual word recognition? Theories of word recognition vary in the importance assigned to semantic information in visual lexical decision, with past research suggesting that the nature of the foils is a crucial determinant of semantic reliance. Here, we explored the conditions under which semantic variables influence lexical decision. Normal readers performed visual lexical decision tasks in which imageability and semantic priming were manipulated, with nonword foils varying systematically in their orthographic and phonological similarity to the real words. The effects of imageability and semantic priming increased in magnitude as nonword foils became progressively more wordlike. These findings provide a clear illustration of the flexible use of semantic information to support normal visual word recognition.     

听障者语音编码的研究范式述评

对于健听者而言,语音编码在阅读中具有重要作用。听障者在阅读中是否存在语音编码？对于拼音文字而言,这个问题目前国际上存在很大的争议。中国听障者在阅读中是否使用了语音编码也逐渐开始受到重视。为了给国内研究听障者语音编码的学者提供参考,本文介绍了考察听障者语音编码研究中常用的研究范式,包括实验程序、逻辑及相应的研究成果。最后,对今后我国听障者语音编码的研究进行了展望。     

Stress regularity or consistency? Reading aloud Italian polysyllables with different stress patterns

Stress assignment to three- and four-syllable Italian words is not predictable by rule, but needs lexical look-up. The present study investigated whether stress assignment to low-frequency Italian words is determined by stress regularity, or by the number of words sharing the final phonological segment and the stress pattern (stress neighborhood or consistency). Experiment 1 showed an effect of stress neighborhood: words were read aloud faster and more accurately when they had a prevalence of stress "friends," irrespective of stress regularity. Moreover, when irregularly stressed words have a higher number of stress friends compared to regularly stressed words, they are read even faster (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, using visual lexical decision, no difference related to the numerosity of stress friends was found. It is concluded that reading aloud Italian low-frequency words with different stress patterns is mainly affected by the numerosity of lexical types that share a given final sequence and the stress pattern. The phonological nature of the numerosity of lexical representations affecting reading aloud finds support in the absence of such effect in visual lexical decision. These results have implications for models of reading aloud that go beyond monosyllables.     

Syllabic tone articulation influences the identification and use of words during Chinese sentence reading: Evidence from ERP and eye movement recordings

In two experiments, we examined the contribution of articulation-specific features to visual word recognition during the reading of Chinese. In spoken Standard Chinese, a syllable with a full tone can be tone-neutralized through sound weakening and pitch contour change, and there are two types of two-character compound words with respect to their articulation variation. One type requires articulation of a full tone for each constituent character, and the other requires a full- and a neutral-tone articulation for the first and second characters, respectively. Words of these two types with identical first characters were selected and embedded in sentences. Native speakers of Standard Chinese were recruited to read the sentences. In Experiment 1, the individual words of a sentence were presented serially at a fixed pace while event-related potentials were recorded. This resulted in less-negative N100 and anterior N250 amplitudes and in more-negative N400 amplitudes when targets contained a neutral tone. Complete sentences were visible in Experiment 2, and eye movements were recorded while participants read. Analyses of oculomotor activity revealed shorter viewing durations and fewer refixations on—and fewer regressive saccades to—target words when their second syllable was articulated with a neutral rather than a full tone. Together, the results indicate that readers represent articulation-specific word properties, that these representations are routinely activated early during the silent reading of Chinese sentences, and that the representations are also used during later stages of word processing.