Effects of Orthography on Speech Production in Chinese

The potential role of orthographic representations on spoken word production was investigated with speakers of Chinese, a non-alphabetic and orthographically non-transparent language. Using the response generation procedure, we obtained the well-known facilitation from word-initial phonological overlap, but this effect was unaffected by whether or not responses shared the initial character. In a study which manipulated the visual similarity of the word-initial character, a significant inhibitory effect of orthography was found. However, this effect disappeared when prompt stimuli were presented auditorily, suggesting that the orthographic effect might be attributable to the memorization stage of the response generation task, rather than reflecting processes genuine to speaking. By contrast, a reliable orthographic effect was found in an oral reading task, suggesting that orthography plays a role only when it is relevant to the word production task. Furthermore, the present findings show that the orthographic effect is tied to the correspondence between orthography and phonology of a language when orthography is relevant to the task used.     

Phonological priming and orthographic analogies in reading

Recent work has demonstrated that children can use orthographic analogies between the spelling patterns in words to help in decoding new words (e.g., using beak to read peak; Goswami, 1986, 1988). However, one objection has been that these analogy effects may be due to phonological priming. Two experiments examined the phonological priming alternative. In Experiment 1, a single word reading task compared the use of analogies to read words that shared both orthography and phonology (e.g., most-post), that shared orthography only (e.g., most-cost), or that shared phonology only (e.g. most-toast--the phonological priming condition). Limited effects of phonological priming were found. Experiment 2 then presented the same words embedded in prose passages--"real reading." While the orthographic analogy effect remained robust, the small phonological priming effect disappeared. It is argued that phonological priming is an insufficient explanation of the analogy effect at the single word level, and plays no role in the use of analogies in story reading.     

Visual phonology: The effects of orthographic consistency on different auditory word recognition tasks

In this study, we investigated orthographic influences on spoken word recognition. The degree of spelling inconsistency was manipulated while rime phonology was held constant. Inconsistent words with subdominant spellings were processed more slowly than inconsistent words with dominant spellings. This graded consistency effect was obtained in three experiments. However, the effect was strongest in lexical decision, intermediate in rime detection, and weakest in auditory naming. We conclude that (1) orthographic consistency effects are not artifacts of phonological, phonetic, or phonotactic properties of the stimulus material; (2) orthographic effects can be found even when the error rate is extremely low, which rules out the possibility that they result from strategies used to reduce task difficulty; and (3) orthographic effects are not restricted to lexical decision. However, they are stronger in lexical decision than in other tasks. Overall, the study shows that learning about orthography alters the way we process spoken language.     

Testing the Role of Phonology in Reading: Focus on Sentence Processing

Most reading research investigating the role of phonology in word recognition has focused on studies employing an individual word as the sole stimulus. The bulk of such research has offered support for the phonological recoding hypothesis, the conjecture that access to a printed word’s meaning requires activation of the word’s phonology (i.e., meaning is not typically activated via orthography alone). A criticism of such studies is that by presenting participants with only a single word on each experimental trial (a nonecological manipulation), participants may alter their typical strategy of reading in such a way as to artificially favor the phonological recoding hypothesis. The present study avoided a focus on single words by requiring participants to read sentences and paragraphs for comprehension. Experiment 1 showed that, in reading a paragraph of connected sentences, eliminating a letter in a word that altered the phonology was more deleterious than eliminating a letter that did. Experiment 2 focused on the reading of each sentence itself rather than on the paragraph and provided additional control conditions. The results were similar to those of Experiment 1, consistent with the phonological recoding hypothesis.     

The role of orthography in speech production revisited

The language production system of literate adults comprises an orthographic system (used during written language production) and a phonological system (used during spoken language production). Recent psycholinguistic research has investigated possible influences of the orthographic system on the phonological system. This research has produced contrastive results, with some studies showing effects of orthography in the course of normal speech production while others failing to show such effects. In this article, we review the available evidence and consider possible explanations for the discrepancy. We then report two form-preparation experiments which aimed at testing for the effects of orthography in spoken word-production. Our results provide clear evidence that the orthographic properties of the words do not influence their spoken production in picture naming. We discuss this finding in relation to psycholinguistic and neuropsychological investigations of the relationship between written and spoken word-production.     

The Malay Lexicon Project: A database of lexical statistics for 9,592 words

Malay, a language spoken by 250 million people, has a shallow alphabetic orthography, simple syllable structures, and transparent affixation—characteristics that contrast sharply with those of English. In the present article, we first compare the letter—phoneme and letter—syllable ratios for a sample of alphabetic orthographies to highlight the importance of separating language-specific from language-universal reading processes. Then, in order to develop a better understanding of word recognition in orthographies with more consistent mappings to phonology than English, we compiled a database of lexical variables (letter length, syllable length, phoneme length, morpheme length, word frequency, orthographic and phonological neighborhood sizes, and orthographic and phonological Levenshtein distances) for 9,592 Malay words. Separate hierarchical regression analyses for Malay and English revealed how the consistency of orthography—phonology mappings selectively modulates the effects of different lexical variables on lexical decision and speeded pronunciation performance. The database of lexical and behavioral measures for Malay is available at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/ supplemental.     

Effects of association,frequency, and stimulus quality on naming words in the presence or absence of pseudowords

According to classical dual-route theory, effects of associative priming and frequency on the naming of printed words arise from lexical access and should be weak or absent when word names are assembled prelexically. Assembled naming would be more likely in a shallow orthography, especially in the presence of nonwords. This hypothesis was examined with the shallow Serbo-Croatian orthography. Interactions between association, frequency, and stimulus quality were also examined in both Serbo-Croatian and English. Contrary to classical dual-route theory, both lexical effects were found for naming words in Serbo-Croatian, with or without nonwords. Neither interaction was significant in Serbo-Croatian and only association X quality was significant in English. Discussion focused on (a) the claim that lexical effects on naming in a shallow orthography constitute prima facie evidence against either prelexical phonology or the orthographic depth hypothesis, and (b) the possible factorization of frequency and active associative knowledge in naming words.     

The activation of phonology during silent Chinese word reading.

The role of phonology in silent Chinese compound-character reading was studied in 2 experiments using a semantic relatedness judgment task. There was significant interference from a homophone of a "target" word that was semantically related to an initially presented cue word whether the homophone was orthographically similar to the target or not. This interference was only observed for exact homophones (i.e., those that had the same tone, consonant, and vowel). In addition, the effect was not significantly modulated by target or distractor frequency, nor was it restricted to cases of associative priming. Substantial interference was also found from orthographically similar nonhomophones of the targets. Together these data are best accounted for by a model that allows for parallel access of semantics via 2 routes, 1 directly from orthography to semantics and the other from orthography to phonology to semantics.     

The influence of spelling on phonological encoding in word reading, object naming, and word generation

Does the spelling of a word mandatorily constrain spoken word production, or does it do so only when spelling is relevant for the production task at hand? Damian and Bowers (2003) reported spelling effects in spoken word production in English using a prompt-response word generation task. Preparation of the response words was disrupted when the responses shared initial phonemes that differed in spelling, suggesting that spelling constrains speech production mandatorily. The present experiments, conducted in Dutch, tested for spelling effects using word production tasks in which spelling was clearly relevant (oral reading in Experiment 1) or irrelevant (object naming and word generation in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively). Response preparation was disrupted by spelling inconsistency only with the word reading, suggesting that the spelling of a word constrains spoken word production in Dutch only when it is relevant for the word production task at hand.     

Phonographic neighbors,not orthographic neighbors,determine word naming latencies

The orthographic neighborhood size (N) of a word—the number of words that can be formed from that word by replacing one letter with another in its place—has been found to have facilitatory effects in word naming. The orthographic neighborhood hypothesis attributes this facilitation to interactive effects. A phonographic neighborhood hypothesis, in contrast, attributes the effect to lexical print-sound conversion. According to the phonographic neighborhood hypothesis, phonographic neighbors (words differing in one letter and one phoneme, e.g., stove and stone) should facilitate naming, and other orthographic neighbors (e.g., stove and shove) should not. The predictions of these two hypotheses are tested. Unique facilitatory phonographic N effects were found in four sets of word naming mega-study data, along with an absence of facilitatory orthographic N effects. These results implicate print-sound conversion—based on consistent phonology—in neighborhood effects rather than word-letter feedback.     

Phonological representation of words in working memory during sentence reading

The temporal dynamics of a visual target word’s phonological representation was examined by presentation of an irrelevant spoken companion word when the participant’s eyes reached the target’s location during sentence reading. The spoken word was identical, similar, or dissimilar to the phonological specification of the visual target. All spoken words increased the time spent viewing the target, with larger effects in thesimilar anddissimilar spoken word conditions than in theidentical condition. The reading of posttarget text was disrupted when the spoken word was similar but not when it was identical or dissimilar to the target. Phonological interference indicates that a word’s phonological representation remains active after it has been identified during sentence reading.     

Long-term repetition priming in spoken and written word production: evidence for a contribution of phonology to handwriting

Although it is relatively well established that access to orthographic codes in production tasks is possible via an autonomous link between meaning and spelling (e.g., Rapp, Benzing, & Caramazza, 1997), the relative contribution of phonology to orthographic access remains unclear. Two experiments demonstrated persistent repetition priming in spoken and written single-word responses, respectively. Two further experiments showed priming from spoken to written responses and vice versa, which is interpreted as reflecting a role of phonology in constraining orthographic access. A final experiment showed priming from spoken onto written responses even when participants engaged in articulatory suppression during writing. Overall, the results support the view that access to orthography codes is accomplished via both the autonomous link between meaning and spelling and an indirect route via phonology.     

The interaction of multiple routes in oral reading: evidence from dissociations in naming and oral reading in phonological dyslexia

During oral reading we hypothesized that lexical representations are activated and selected for output by the simultaneous activation of the semantic, the direct lexical orthography to phonology, and the sublexical grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (GPC) routes (Southwood & Chatterjee, 1999). Serial models of reading argue that the semantic route governs oral reading with minimal influence from the nonlexical direct route and the sublexical GPC route. These models predict that semantic errors should occur in reading when the semantic route and GPC are both impaired. The Simultaneous Activation Hypothesis predicts few semantic errors in oral reading but many during picture naming. Semantic errors are infrequent in reading because information from all three reading routes constrains activation of a phonological entry. By contrast phonological selection in picture naming is constrained primarily by the semantic route and if damaged additional information is unavailable to select the appropriate phonological code. In agreement with the Simultaneous Activation Hypothesis five phonological dyslexics produced semantic errors during picture naming but not when reading aloud. Phonological errors were present during oral reading and minimal during picture naming.     

On the dissociation between reaction time and response duration as a function of lexical and sublexical reading: An examination of phonetic decoding and computational models

Neurobiological models of reading account for two ways in which orthography is converted to phonology: (1) familiar words, particularly those with exceptional spelling-sound mappings (e.g., shoe) access their whole-word lexical representations in the ventral visual stream, and (2) orthographically unfamiliar words, particularly those with regular spelling-sound mappings (i.e., pseudohomophones [PHs], which are orthographically novel but sound like real words; e.g., shue) are phonetically decoded via sublexical processing in the dorsal visual stream. The present study used a naming task in order to compare naming reaction time (RT) and response duration (RD) of exception and regular words to their PH counterparts. We replicated our earlier findings with words, and extended them to PH phonetic decoding by showing a similar effect on RT and RD of matched PHs. Given that the shorter RDs for exception words can be attributed to the benefit of whole-word processing in the orthographic word system, and the longer RTs for exception words to the conflict with phonetic decoding, our PH results demonstrate that phonetic decoding also involves top-down feedback from phonological lexical representations (e.g., activated by shue) to the orthographic representations of the corresponding correct word (e.g., shoe). Two computational models were tested for their ability to account for these effects: the DRC and the CDP+. The CDP+ fared best as it was capable of simulating both the regularity and stimulus type effect on RT for both word and PH identification, although not their over-additive interaction. Our results demonstrate that both lexical reading and phonetic decoding elicit a regularity dissociation between RT and RD that provides important constraints to all models of reading, and that phonetic decoding results in top-down feedback that bolsters the orthographic lexical reading process.     

Activation of semantic information at the sublexical level during handwriting production: Evidence from inhibition effects of Chinese semantic radicals in the picture‐word interference paradigm

Using a non‐alphabetic language (e.g., Chinese), the present study tested a novel view that semantic information at the sublexical level should be activated during handwriting production. Over 80% of Chinese characters are phonograms, in which semantic radicals represent category information (e.g., 椅 ‘chair,’ 桃 ‘peach,’ 橙 ‘orange’ are related to plants) while phonetic radicals represent phonetic information (e.g., 狼 ‘wolf,’ 朗 ‘brightness,’ 郎 ‘male,’ are all pronounced /lang/). Under different semantic category conditions at the lexical level (semantically related in Experiment 1; semantically unrelated in Experiment 2), the orthographic relatedness and semantic relatedness of semantic radicals in the picture name and its distractor were manipulated under different SOAs (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, the interval between the onset of the picture and the onset of the interference word). Two questions were addressed: (1) Is it possible that semantic information could be activated in the sublexical level conditions? (2) How are semantic and orthographic information dynamically accessed in word production? Results showed that both orthographic and semantic information were activated under the present picture‐word interference paradigm, dynamically under different SOAs, which supported our view that discussions on semantic processes in the writing modality should be extended to the sublexical level. The current findings provide possibility for building new orthography‐phonology‐semantics models in writing.     

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.     

Brain potentials as indices of orthographic and phonological interaction during word matching

The interaction between orthographic and phonological codes in a same-different judgment task was studied by requiring subjects to decide if two visually presented words either looked alike or rhymed. Word pairs were selected from four different lists. Words rhymed and looked alike, rhymed but did not look alike, looked alike but did not rhyme, or neither looked alike nor rhymed. Reaction time and percent error increased whenever there was a conflict between the orthography and phonology of the words. The N200 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) indicated that subjects were capable of detecting phonological differences between words within 260 ms from the presentation of a word pair. The amplitude of the N200s also varied with the degree of mismatch between words. N200s were largest when both the orthography and phonology mismatched, of intermediate amplitude when either orthography or phonology mismatched, and smallest when both orthography and phonology matched. P300 latency was consistent with reaction time, increasing whenever there was a conflict between the two codes. Taken together, behavioral measures and the ERP data suggest that the extraction of the orthographic and phonological aspects of words occurs early in the information processing sequence.     

Examining the interactivity of lexical orthographic and phonological processing.

The number and type of connections involving different levels of orthographic and phonological representations differentiate between several models of spoken and visual word recognition. At the sublexical level of processing, Borowsky, Owen, and Fonos (1999) demonstrated evidence for direct processing connections from grapheme representations to phoneme representations (i.e., a sensitivity effect) over and above any bias effects, but not in the reverse direction. Neural network models of visual word recognition implement an orthography to phonology processing route that involves the same connections for processing sublexical and lexical information, and thus a similar pattern of cross-modal effects for lexical stimuli are expected by models that implement this single type of connection (i.e., orthographic lexical processing should directly affect phonological lexical processing, but not in the reverse direction). Furthermore, several models of spoken word perception predict that there should be no direct connections between orthographic representations and phonological representations, regardless of whether the connections are sublexical or lexical. The present experiments examined these predictions by measuring the influence of a cross-modal word context on word target discrimination. The results provide constraints on the types of connections that can exist between orthographic lexical representations and phonological lexical representations.     

Rapid naming speed components and reading development in a consistent orthography

We examined how rapid automatized naming (RAN) components-articulation time and pause time-predict word and text reading fluency in a consistent orthography (Greek). In total, 68 children were followed from Grade 2 to Grade 6 and were assessed three times on RAN (Digits and Objects), phonological awareness, orthographic processing, speed of processing, and reading fluency. Both RAN components were strongly related to reading fluency and, with few exceptions, accounted for unique variance over and above the contribution of speed of processing, phonological awareness, and orthographic processing. The amount of predictive variance shared between the components and the cognitive processing skills varied across time. The implications of these findings for the RAN-reading relationship are discussed.     

Reading spoken words: orthographic effects in auditory priming

Three experiments examined the involvement of orthography in spoken word processing using a task - unimodal auditory priming with offset overlap - taken to reflect activation of prelexical representations. Two types of prime-target relationship were compared; both involved phonological overlap, but only one had a strong orthographic overlap (e.g., dream-gleam vs. scheme-gleam). In Experiment 1, which used lexical decision, phonological overlap facilitated target responses in comparison with an unrelated condition (e.g., stove-gleam). More importantly, facilitation was modulated by degree of orthographic overlap. Experiment 2 employed the same design as Experiment 1, but with a modified procedure aimed at eliciting swifter responses. Again, the phonological priming effect was sensitive to the degree of orthographic overlap between prime and target. Finally, to test whether this orthographic boost was caused by congruency between response type and valence of the prime-target overlap, Experiment 3 used a pseudoword detection task, in which participants responded "yes" to novel words and "no" to known words. Once again phonological priming was observed, with a significant boost in the orthographic overlap condition. These results indicate a surprising level of orthographic involvement in speech perception, and provide clear evidence for mandatory orthographic activation during spoken word recognition.