Semantic priming and repetition priming from masked words: evidence for a center-surround attentional mechanism in perceptual recognition

Two lexical decision experiments compared semantic and repetition priming by masked words. Experiment 1 established prime-mask stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) with presence-absence detection judgments. Primes presented at detection-threshold SOAs produced equal facilitation for repeated and semantically related targets: 26 ms and 24 ms. Experiment 2 established SOAs with semantic judgments. Primes presented at 70% of the semantic-threshold SOA to mimic the exposure conditions of Experiment 1 produced slightly greater facilitation for repeated targets but a tendency toward inhibition for semantically related targets: 38 ms and -6 ms. These results confirm Dagenbach, Carr, and Wilhelmsen's (1989) report that strategies induced by threshold-setting tasks can influence masked priming. In addition, Experiment 2 suggests a mechanism for retrieving weakly activated semantic codes into consciousness that relies on the center-surround principle to enhance activation of sought-for codes and to inhibit related codes stored nearby in the semantic network.     

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.     

Letter visibility and word recognition: The optimal viewing position in printed words

It has repeatedly been shown that the time and accuracy of recognizing a word depend strongly on where in the word the eye is fixating. Word-recognition performance is maximal when the eye fixates a region near the word’s center, and decreases to both sides of this “optimal viewing position.” The reason for this phenomenon is assumed to be the strong drop-off of visual acuity: the visibility of letters decreases with increasing eccentricity from fixation location. Consequently, fewer letters can be identified when the beginning or ending of a word is fixated than when its center is fixated. The present study is a test of this visual acuity hypothesis. If the phenomenon is caused by letter visibility, then it should be sensitive to variations of visual conditions in which the letters are presented. By increasing the interletter distances of the word(e.g.,a_t_t_e_m_ p_ t), letter visibility was decreased. As expected from our hypothesis, the viewing-position effect became more exaggerated. An additional experiment showed that destroying word-shape information (e.g., aTtEmPt) decreased overall word-recognition performance but had no influence on the viewingposition effect. Varying the viewing position in words might thus be used as a paradigm, allowing one to separate out the contribution of letter information and supraletter information to word recognition.     

Unconscious processing of dichoptically masked words

In three experiments, the subjects' task was to decide whether each of a series of words connoted something good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (stress, detest, malaria). One-half second before the presentation of each such target word, an evaluatively polarized priming word was presented briefly to the nondominant eye and was masked dichoptically by either the rapidly following (Experiment 1) or simultaneous (Experiments 2 and 3) presentation of a random letter-fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (The effectiveness of the masking procedure was demonstrated by the subjects' inability to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In all experiments, significant masked priming effects were obtained; evaluative decisions to congruent masked prime-target combinations (such as a positive masked prime followed by a positive target) were significantly faster than those to incongruent (e.g., negative prime/positive target) or noncongruent (e.g., neutral prime/positive target) combinations. Also, in two of the three experiments, when subjects were at chance accuracy in discriminating word position, their position judgments were nevertheless significantly influenced by the irrelevant semantic content (LEFT vs. RIGHT) of the masked position-varying words. The series of experiments demonstrated that two very different tasks--speeded judgment of evaluative meaning and nonspeeded judgment of word position--yielded statistically significant and replicable influences of the semantic content of apparently undetectable words. Coupled with previous research by others using the lexical decision task, these findings converge in establishing the reliability of the empirical phenomenon of semantic processing of words that are rendered undetectable by dichoptic pattern masking.     

Letter visibility and word recognition: the optimal viewing position in printed words.

It has repeatedly been shown that the time and accuracy of recognizing a word depend strongly on where in the word the eye is fixating. Word-recognition performance is maximal when the eye fixates a region near the word's center, and decreases to both sides of this "optimal viewing position." The reason for this phenomenon is assumed to be the strong drop-off of visual acuity: the visibility of letters decreases with increasing eccentricity from fixation location. Consequently, fewer letters can be identified when the beginning or ending of a word is fixated than when its center is fixated. The present study is a test of this visual acuity hypothesis. If the phenomenon is caused by letter visibility, then it should be sensitive to variations of visual conditions in which the letters are presented. By increasing the interletter distances of the word (e.g., a_t_t_e_m_p_t), letter visibility was decreased. As expected from our hypothesis, the viewing-position effect became more exaggerated. An additional experiment showed that destroying word-shape information (e.g., aTtEmPt) decreased overall word-recognition performance but had no influence on the viewing-position effect. Varying the viewing position in words might thus be used as a paradigm, allowing one to separate out the contribution of letter information and supraletter information to word recognition.     

On the role of the upper part of words in lexical access: evidence with masked priming

More than 100 years ago, Huey (1908/1968) indicated that the upper part of words was more relevant for perception than the lower part. Here we examined whether mutilated words, in their upper/lower portions (e.g., ), can automatically access their word units in the mental lexicon. To that end, we conducted four masked repetition priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Results showed that mutilated primes produced a sizeable masked repetition priming effect. Furthermore, the magnitude of the masked repetition priming effect was greater when the upper part of the primes was preserved than when the lower portion was preserved-this was the case not only when the mutilated words were presented in lower case but also when the mutilated words were presented in upper case. Taken together, these findings suggest that the front-end of computational models of visual-word recognition should be modified to provide a more realistic account at the level of letter features.     

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.     

Authenticity affects the recognition of emotions in speech: behavioral and fMRI evidence

The aim of the present study was to determine how authenticity of emotion expression in speech modulates activity in the neuronal substrates involved in emotion recognition. Within an fMRI paradigm, participants judged either the authenticity (authentic or play acted) or emotional content (anger, fear, joy, or sadness) of recordings of spontaneous emotions and reenactments by professional actors. When contrasting between task types, active judgment of authenticity, more than active judgment of emotion, indicated potential involvement of the theory of mind (ToM) network (medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal cortex, retrosplenium) as well as areas involved in working memory and decision making (BA 47). Subsequently, trials with authentic recordings were contrasted with those of reenactments to determine the modulatory effects of authenticity. Authentic recordings were found to enhance activity in part of the ToM network (medial prefrontal cortex). This effect of authenticity suggests that individuals integrate recollections of their own experiences more for judgments involving authentic stimuli than for those involving play-acted stimuli. The behavioral and functional results show that authenticity of emotional prosody is an important property influencing human responses to such stimuli, with implications for studies using play-acted emotions.     

Semantic transparency and masked morphological priming: The case of prefixed words

In four lexical decision experiments, we investigated masked morphological priming with Dutch prefixed words. Reliable effects of morphological relatedness were obtained with visual primes and visual targets in the absence of effects due to pure form overlap. In certain conditions, priming effects were significantly greater with semantically transparent prefixed primes (e.g., rename-name) relative to the priming effects obtained with semantically opaque prefixed words (e.g., relate-late), even with very brief (40-msec) prime durations. With visual primes and auditory targets (cross-modal priming), significant facilitation was found in all related prime conditions, independent of whether or not primes were morphologically related to targets. The results are interpreted within a bimodal hierarchical model of word recognition in which morphological effects arise through the interplay of sublexical (morpho-orthographic) and supralexical (morpho-semantic) representations. The word stimuli from this study may be downloaded as supplemental materials from http://mc.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.     

情绪词类型效应：区分情绪标签词和情绪负载词的行为和神经活动证据

情绪标签词直接表达情绪状态,而情绪负载词本身不表达情绪状态,但能引发个体的情绪反应。通过对情绪标签词和情绪负载词的相关研究综述发现,情绪标签词与情绪负载词的加工优势存在不一致的结果;任务需求、语言类型和词汇特征是导致情绪词类型效应不一致的主要原因;情绪标签词与情绪负载词的加工差异可以通过语义表征的具身假说、密度假说进行解释。未来研究应深入考察情绪标签词与情绪负载词加工差异的原因;考察两种词在句子和语篇水平的加工差异;提供能够直接解释情绪词类型效应的理论假说;对比中英双语者加工中文和英文情绪标签词和情绪负载词的差异;采用神经成像技术继续探查情绪信息与语义信息加工的神经机制。     

Apathy in frontotemporal dementia: behavioral and neuroimaging correlates

We investigated the occurrence of goal-directed motivational change in the form of apathy in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), particularly those with behavioral variant social and executive deficits (bvFTD). Standardized behavioral inventory was employed to survey and compare apathy ratings from patients and caregivers. In cases of bvFTD, apathy ratings were further related to measures of social cognition, executive function, and atrophy on brain MRI. Results indicated that caregivers rated bvFTD patients as having significantly elevated apathy scores though patient self-ratings were normal. Caregiver and self-ratings of FTD samples with progressive nonfluent aphasia and semantic dementia did not differ from healthy controls and their informants. In the bvFTD sample, caregiver apathy scores were not correlated with general cognitive screening or depression scores, but were significantly correlated with social cognition and executive function measures. Voxel-based morphometry revealed that apathy ratings in bvFTD were related to prominent atrophy in the right caudate (including the ventral striatum), the right temporo-parietal junction, right posterior inferior and middle temporal gyri, and left frontal operculum- anterior insula region. Findings suggest that bvFTD is associated with a significant breakdown in goal-directed motivated behavior involving disruption of cortical-basal ganglia circuits that is also related to social and executive function deficits.     

Location invariance in masked repetition priming of letters and words

Earlier studies have suggested that information from a prime stimulus can be integrated with target information even when the two stimuli appear at different spatial locations. Here, we examined such location invariance in a masked repetition priming paradigm with single letter and word stimuli. In order to neutralize effects of acuity and spatial attention on prime processing, subliminal prime stimuli always appeared on fixation. Target location varied randomly from trial to trial along the horizontal meridian at one of seven possible locations for letter stimuli (? 7° to + 7°) and three positions for word stimuli (? 4°, 0°, + 4°). Speed of responding to letter and word targets was affected by target location, and by priming, but the size of repetition priming effects did not vary as a function of target location. These results suggest that masked repetition priming is mediated by representations that integrate information about object identity independently of object location.     

Unconscious processing of multiple nonadjacent letters in visually masked words

The claim that visually masked, unidentifiable ("subliminal") words are analyzed at the level of whole word meaning has been challenged by recent findings indicating that instead, analysis occurs mainly at the subword level. The present experiments examined possible limits on subword analysis. Experiment 1 obtained semantic priming from pleasant- and unpleasant-meaning subliminal words in which no individual letter contained diagnostic information about a word's evaluative valence; thus analysis must operate on information more complex than that contained in individual letters. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that analysis must operate on information more complex than that represented by individual bigrams (adjacent letters) or trigrams (three consecutive letters). These findings suggest that while subliminal priming is driven by subword analysis, the effective units of analysis are distributed widely across at least short (four- and five-letter) words.     

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: evidence from novel schwa words

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /??nyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.     

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.     

The influence of intention on masked priming: a study with semantic classification of words

Unconscious perception is commonly described as a phenomenon that is not under intentional control and relies on automatic processes. We challenge this view by arguing that some automatic processes may indeed be under intentional control, which is implemented in task-sets that define how the task is to be performed. In consequence, those prime attributes that are relevant to the task will be most effective. To investigate this hypothesis, we used a paradigm which has been shown to yield reliable short-lived priming in tasks based on semantic classification of words. This type of study uses fast, well practised classification responses, whereby responses to targets are much less accurate if prime and target belong to a different category than if they belong to the same category. In three experiments, we investigated whether the intention to classify the same words with respect to different semantic categories had a differential effect on priming. The results suggest that this was indeed the case: Priming varied with the task in all experiments. However, although participants reported not seeing the primes, they were able to classify the primes better than chance using the classification task they had used before with the targets. When a lexical task was used for discrimination in experiment 4, masked primes could however not be discriminated. Also, priming was as pronounced when the primes were visible as when they were invisible. The pattern of results suggests that participants had intentional control on prime processing, even if they reported not seeing the primes.     

Emotion words and categories: evidence from lexical decision

We examined the categorical nature of emotion word recognition. Positive, negative, and neutral words were presented in lexical decision tasks. Word frequency was additionally manipulated. In Experiment 1, “positive” and “negative” categories of words were implicitly indicated by the blocked design employed. A significant emotion–frequency interaction was obtained, replicating past research. While positive words consistently elicited faster responses than neutral words, only low frequency negative words demonstrated a similar advantage. In Experiments 2a and 2b, explicit categories (“positive,” “negative,” and “household” items) were specified to participants. Positive words again elicited faster responses than did neutral words. Responses to negative words, however, were no different than those to neutral words, regardless of their frequency. The overall pattern of effects indicates that positive words are always facilitated, frequency plays a greater role in the recognition of negative words, and a “negative” category represents a somewhat disparate set of emotions. These results support the notion that emotion word processing may be moderated by distinct systems.     

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.     

Visual word recognition of single-syllable words

Speeded visual word naming and lexical decision performance are reported for 2428 words for young adults and healthy older adults. Hierarchical regression techniques were used to investigate the unique predictive variance of phonological features in the onsets, lexical variables (e.g., measures of consistency, frequency, familiarity, neighborhood size, and length), and semantic variables (e.g. imageahility and semantic connectivity). The influence of most variables was highly task dependent, with the results shedding light on recent empirical controversies in the available word recognition literature. Semantic-level variables accounted for unique variance in both speeded naming and lexical decision performance, level with the latter task producing the largest semantic-level effects. Discussion focuses on the utility of large-scale regression studies in providing a complementary approach to the standard factorial designs to investigate visual word recognition.