Norms for words that rhyme

The use of rhyme in learning/memory and cognitive studies is extensive. However, there are very few normative studies for words that rhyme. The current study rectified this problem by collecting rhyme norms for 477 words from 545 subjects. Groups of subjects were given 40 words in serial order and requested, for each word, to generate as many rhymes as possible within a 30-sec interval. The data include several rhyme measures as well as measures of other word attributes that were taken from other sources. In addition, the rhyme responses to the target words were given along with their Thomdike and Lorge (1944) and Ku?era and Francis (1967) normative frequencies. Finally, the data were used to investigate various relationships including the spew hypothesis and the accessibility of rhyme sets.     

Specific phonological impairments in dyslexia revealed by eyetracking

Phonological deficits in dyslexia are typically assessed using metalinguistic tasks vulnerable to extraneous factors such as attention and memory. The present work takes the novel approach of measuring phonology using eyetracking. Eye movements of dyslexic children were monitored during an auditory word recognition task in which target items in a display (e.g., candle) were accompanied by distractors sharing a cohort (candy) or rhyme (sandal). Like controls, dyslexics showed slower recognition times when a cohort distractor was present than in a baseline condition with only phonologically unrelated distractors. However, unlike controls, dyslexic children did not show slowed recognition of targets with a rhyme distractor, suggesting they had not encoded rhyme relationships. This was further explored in an overt phonological awareness test of cohort and rhyme. Surprisingly, dyslexics showed normal rhyme performance but poorer judgment of initial sounds on these overt tests. The results implicate impaired knowledge of rhyme information in dyslexia; however they also indicate that testing methodology plays a critical role in how such problems are identified.     

The nature of rhyme processing in preliterate children

Background. Rhyme awareness is one of the earliest forms of phonological awareness to develop and is assessed in many developmental studies by means of a simple rhyme task. The influence of more demanding experimental paradigms on rhyme judgment performance is often neglected. Addressing this issue may also shed light on whether rhyme processing is more global or analytical in nature. Aims. The aim of the present study was to examine whether lexical status and global similarity relations influenced rhyme judgments in kindergarten children and if so, if there is an interaction between these two factors. Sample. Participants were 41 monolingual Dutch-speaking preliterate kindergartners (average age 6.0 years) who had not yet received any formal reading education. Method. To examine the effects of lexical status and phonological similarity processing, the kindergartners were asked to make rhyme judgements on (pseudo) word targets that rhymed, phonologically overlapped or were unrelated to (pseudo) word primes. Results. Both a lexicality effect (pseudo-words were more difficult than words) and a global similarity effect (globally similar non-rhyming items were more difficult to reject than unrelated items) were observed. In addition, whereas in words the global similarity effect was only present in accuracy outcomes, in pseudo-words it was also observed in the response latencies. Furthermore, a large global similarity effect in pseudo-words correlated with a low score on short-term memory skills and grapheme knowledge. Conclusions. Increasing task demands led to a more detailed assessment of rhyme processing skills. Current assessment paradigms should therefore be extended with more demanding conditions. In light of the views on rhyme processing, we propose that a combination of global and analytical strategies is used to make a correct rhyme judgment.     

Advantages and disadvantages of phonological similarity in serial recall and serial recognition of nonwords

The phonological similarity effect (PSE) was studied with lists of nonwords in one task of serial recall and one task of serial recognition. PSE was critically affected by the scoring procedure and the type of phonological similarity involved, and the effect diverged in several ways from the findings of previous studies on words. PSE was absent in serial recall, regardless of scoring procedure, when phonologically similar items that shared the midvowel were compared with phonologically distinct items. PSE was reversed when serial recall and item recall scores of rhyme items and consonant frame items were compared with distinct items, but it was present in the position accuracy score of rhyme lists. In serial recognition, PSE was absent when rhyme lists were compared with distinct lists. Recognition was better for consonant frame lists than for rhyme lists, and there was a marginally significant reversal of PSE when consonant frame lists were compared with distinct lists. In the view of Fallon, Groves, and Tehan's (1999) study and the present study, rhyming improves item recall and serial recall but diminishes position accuracy, regardless of lexicality. But consonant frame lists with differing midvowels have higher item recall, serial recall, and position accuracy scores than do rhyme lists.     

Rhyme Priming in Aphasia: The Role of Phonology in Lexical Access

The present experiment was conducted to explore the facilitory effects of rhyme in lexical processing in brain-damaged individuals. Normal subjects and non-fluent and fluent aphasic subjects performed auditory lexical decision and rhyme judgement tasks, in which prime-target pairs were phonologically related (either identical or rhyming) or unrelated. Results revealed rhyme facilitation of lexical decisions to real-word targets for normal and non-fluent aphasic subjects; for fluent aphasic subjects, results were equivocal. In the rhyme judgement task, facilitory effects of rhyme were found for all three groups with real-word targets. None of the groups showed clear rhyme facilitation effects with non-word targets in either task. Findings are discussed with reference to the role of phonology in lexical processing in normal and aphasic populations.     

《彖传》韵考

本文据《彖传》解释古经六十四卦卦名、卦辞、卦义的特点,认定《彖传》为六十四章,逐章考证了 其押韵韵部,共得出二百五十三个韵脚字,即二百五十三个韵句,又据换韵与语义特征,考证了《彖传》的 语义段。二百五十三个韵脚字分布于古韵十八部中,这为一系列的重要研究提供了基础。     

ERP Correlates of Form and Rhyme Letter Tasks in Impaired Reading Children: A Critical Evaluation

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained from 15 electrode sites in six average and six impaired reading children, 12 years of age, during visual letter discrimination tasks. Subjects responded to target letters with an enclosed area in the form task and to letters that rhymed with “e” in the rhyme task. Response accuracy was similar between the groups. Reaction time was relatively longer for the impaired group during the rhyme task. At lateral sites, condition differences were evident as greater negative shifts in the rhyme task than the form at 170 and 470 ms as well as a delayed late positivity for the rhyme. In terms of reading ability, the average readers’ ERPs were more negative than those of the impaired group at 270 and 450 ms. Interhemispheric variations were also seen between the groups, with the average readers more negative than the impaired readers at right hemisphere sites. Contrary to expectations, group differences in the ERP did not vary substantially as a function of condition, and task demands were evaluated in view of these findings.     

ERP correlates of form and rhyme letter tasks in impaired reading children: a critical evaluation.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained from 15 electrode sites in six average and six impaired reading children, 12 years of age, during visual letter discrimination tasks. Subjects responded to target letters with an enclosed area in the form task and to letters that rhymed with "e" in the rhyme task. Response accuracy was similar between the groups. Reaction time was relatively longer for the impaired group during the rhyme task. At lateral sites, condition differences were evident as greater negative shifts in the rhyme task than the form at 170 and 470 ms as well as a delayed late positivity for the rhyme. In terms of reading ability, the average readers' ERPs were more negative than those of the impaired group at 270 and 450 ms. Inter-hemispheric variations were also seen between the groups, with the average readers more negative than the impaired readers at right hemisphere sites. Contrary to expectations, group differences in the ERP did not vary substantially as a function of condition, and task demands were evaluated in view of these findings.     

Young children's phonological sensitivity after exposure to a rhyming or nonrhyming story.

This study examined the ability of preschool children to make phonological discriminations after hearing rhyming or nonrhyming versions of the same story. Participants first listened to either a rhyming or nonrhyming version of a story, Rainy Day Kate (Blegvad, 1987), then attempted a phonological deletion and a rhyme/alliteration detection task. In accordance with prior theoretical notions that listening to rhyme sensitizes young children to phonological properties of words, children who heard the rhyming version of the story showed significantly higher performance on the rhyme/alliteration task than did participants who heard the nonrhyming narrative. Children in the rhyme condition also offered more rhyming and clang (nonword but phonologically similar) associates in completing the phonological deletion task.     

Accessing short-term memory with semantic and phonological information: A time-course analysis

The time course for accessing short-term memory representations on the basis of item, phonological, and semantic information was measured with a speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) variant of a recognition probe task. Subjects studied 5-word lists and then judged whether a test word (1) was in the study list (item judgment); (2) rhymed with a word in the study list (rhyme judgment); or (3) was a synonym of a word in the study list (synonym judgment). Analysis of the SAT retrieval functions demonstrated that judgments based on phonological and semantic information were slower and less accurate than judgments based on composite item representations. The slower retrieval dynamics for rhyme and synonym judgments suggest that judgments based on component properties of the memory trace are mediated by either a generate or recall process distinct from the parallel or direct-access mechanism used in item judgments.     

The rhyming skills of deaf children educated with phonetically augmented speechreading

Two experiments investigated whether profoundly deaf children's rhyming ability was determined by the linguistic input that they were exposed to in their early childhood. Children educated with Cued Speech (CS) were compared to other deaf children, educated orally or with sign language. In CS, speechreading is combined with manual cues that disambiguate it. The central hypothesis is that CS allows deaf children to develop accurate phonological representations, which, in turn, assist in the emergence of accurate rhyming abilities. Experiment 1 showed that the deaf children educated early with CS performed better at rhyme judgement than did other deaf children. The performance of early CS-users was not influenced by word spelling. Experiment 2 confirmed this result in a rhyme generation task. Taken together, results support the hypothesis that rhyming ability depends on early exposure to a linguistic input specifying all phonological contrasts, independently of the modality (visual or auditory) in which this input is perceived.     

Young Children's Phonological Sensitivity After Exposure to a Rhyming or Nonrhyming Story

This study examined the ability of preschool children to make phonological discriminations after hearing rhyming or nonrhyming versions of the same story. Participants first listened to either a rhyming or nonrhyming version of a story, Rainy Day Kate (Blegvad, 1987), then attempted a phonological deletion and a rhyme/alliteration detection task. In accordance with prior theoretical notions that listening to rhyme sensitizes young children to phonological properties of words, children who heard the rhyming version of the story showed significantly higher performance on the rhyme/alliteration task than did participants who heard the nonrhyming narrative. Children in the rhyme condition also offered more rhyming and clang (nonword but phonologically similar) associates in completing the phonological deletion task.     

Event-related potentials and the interaction between orthographic and phonological information in a rhyme-judgment task

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from one midline and three pairs of lateral electrodes in three experiments involving a rhyme-judgment task. Experiment 1 employed sequentially presented word pairs consisting of orthographically similar and dissimilar rhyming and nonrhyming items (RUNG-SUNG, MAKE-ACHE, BEAD-DEAD, GIFT-ROAD). Comparison of the ERPs elicited by the dissimilar pairs revealed a rhyme/nonrhyme difference in the form of an increase in the amplitude of a late negative component (N450) for nonrhyming pairs; this effect was confined almost entirely to right-hemisphere electrodes. By contrast, rhyme/nonrhyme differences in the ERPs to orthographically similar word pairs were smaller in magnitude, later in onset, and bilaterally distributed. Experiment 2 showed that this pattern of ERP effects with orthographically similar items depended upon orthographic and not visual similarity. Experiment 3 tested the hypothesis that the lack of a right-hemisphere based N450 effect with orthographically similar items resulted from the operation of an orthographic priming mechanism. ERPs to nonrhyming pairs containing a word with an inconsistent segment (COAST-FROST) were compared with visually matched controls (SPARSE-CREASE). The rhyme/nonrhyme differences in the N450 components from these two conditions were indistinguishable, although subjects found it as difficult to make nonrhyme responses to "COAST-FROST" pairs as to the orthographically similar nonrhyming items in Experiment 1. It was concluded that while "orthographic priming" accounted for the behavioral data from these experiments, it could not explain the interaction between phonology and orthography observed in the concurrently recorded ERP data.     

Prior knowledge and recognition

The purpose of this series of experiments was to determine if and when word recognition would depend on the number of related concepts represented in permanent memory. Words defining either large or small rhyme or meaning categories were studied and tested under various conditions. The results indicated that rhyme category size influenced recognition whenever rhyme was emphasized during both study and testing phases. Words belonging to larger rhyme sets were not recognized as well as those belonging to smaller rhyme sets. In contrast, meaning-related set size had no effect on recognition. These and other findings indicate that the breadth of prior knowledge can influence recognition but only under limited conditions that reactivate this knowledge at test.     

Hemispheric predominance assessment of phonology and semantics: a divided visual field experiment

The aim of the present behavioural experiment was to evaluate the most lateralized among two phonological (phoneme vs. rhyme detection) and the most lateralized among two semantic ("living" vs. "edible" categorization) tasks, within the dominant hemisphere for language. The reason of addressing this question was a practical one: to evaluate the degree of the hemispheric lateralization for several language tasks, by using the divided visual presentation of stimuli, and then choose the most lateralized semantic and phonological for mapping language in patients by using fMRI in future studies. During the divided visual field experiment by using words (semantic tasks) and pseudo-words (phonological tasks) as stimuli, thirty-nine right-handed participants were examined. Our results have shown that all tasks were significantly left hemisphere lateralized. Furthermore, the rhyme was significantly more lateralized than phoneme detection and "living" was significantly more lateralized than "edible" categorization. The rhyme decision and "living" categorization will be used in future fMRI studies for assessing hemispheric predominance and cerebral substrate for semantics and phonology in patients. Our results also suggest that the characteristics of stimuli could influence the degree of the hemispheric lateralization (i.e., the emotional charge of stimuli for words and the position of the phoneme to be detected, for pseudo-words).     

Effects of rhyme and spelling patterns on auditory word ERPs depend on selective attention to phonology

ERP responses to spoken words are sensitive to both rhyming effects and effects of associated spelling patterns. Are such effects automatically elicited by spoken words or dependent on selectively attending to phonology? To address this question, ERP responses to spoken word pairs were investigated under two equally demanding listening tasks that directed selective attention either to sub-syllabic phonology (i.e., rhyme judgments) or to melodies embedded within the words. ERPs elicited when participants selectively attended to phonology demonstrated a rhyming effect that was concurrent with online stimulus encoding and an orthographic effect that emerged later. ERP responses to the same stimuli presented under melodic focus, however, showed no evidence of sensitivity to rhyme or spelling patterns. Results reveal limitations to the automaticity of such ERP effects, suggesting that rhyme effects may depend, at least to some degree, on allocation of attention to phonology, which may in turn activate task-incidental orthographic information.     

The hubris penalty: Biased responses to “Celebration” displays of black football players

We posit that pride and arrogance are tolerated for high-status group members but are repudiated for low-status group members. Thus, we predict that Blacks, but not Whites, who behave arrogantly will be penalized. Specifically, we investigated the context of penalties against football players for “celebrating” after touchdowns. We propose that such celebrations reflect a racially biased “hubris penalty” because: (1) celebrations are primarily perceived as displays of arrogance (rather than exuberance), and (2) arrogance is penalized for Black but not White players. Three experiments demonstrate that all players who celebrated after touchdowns were perceived as more arrogant than those who did not celebrate. Although celebratory Black and White players were perceived as being equally arrogant, Black players were penalized with lower compensation whereas White players were not. Mediation analyses show that perceived arrogance mediated the effect of celebration on compensation, even when controlling for perceived aggression.     

Perceptions musicales et conscience phonologique : recherche auprès d’enfants francophones d’âge préscolaire

Research led with English, Turkish and Slovak-speaking preschoolers have shown positive correlations between musical perceptual skills and phonological awareness. However, limited studies have been conducted in other linguistic contexts. In that regard, the aim of this study is to examine the correlation between musical perceptual skills (pitch and duration discrimination) and phonological awareness (syllable, rhyme and phoneme identification; rhyme identification) among 61 Francophone preschoolers (34 girls and 27 boys, mean age 4.7 months). Each participant completed a phonological awareness test, a music perception test and a non-verbal cognitive abilities task (spatial memory). The relationship between musical perceptual skills and phonological awareness was investigated using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. Preliminary analyses were performed to ensure no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity and homoscedasticity. There was a moderate positive correlation between the two variables. The syllable identification task was the only one correlated with both pitch and duration discrimination tasks. It is possible to believe that better perceptual musical abilities improve, even boost, syllable treatment among Francophone preschoolers. Since rhyme and phoneme awareness seem to emerge after syllable awareness, this could explain why no correlation was observed with musical perceptual skills among those young participants.     

Variation in working memory capacity and episodic memory: Examining the importance of encoding specificity

In the present study, we examined the extent to which encoding specificity influences the relation between individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and episodic recall. Participants performed a paired associates cued recall task in which a rhyme or a semantic judgment was made during encoding. During recall participants were presented with the cue word along with either a rhyme or semantic cue. Across both rhyme and semantic conditions, encoding and retrieval conditions either matched or mismatched. When encoding and retrieval conditions matched, high WMC individuals outperformed low WMC individuals. When encoding and retrieval conditions mismatched, high and low WMC individuals performed equivalently. Importantly, this occurred because high WMC individuals were hurt more than low WMC individuals when conditions mismatched. These results demonstrate the importance of encoding specificity in the relation between WMC and episodic recall as well as of unifying prior work that has demonstrated that high WMC individuals are hurt more in some recall conditions than are low WMC individuals.     

Difficulties in auditory organization as a cause of reading backwardness? An auditory neuroscience perspective

Over 30 years ago, it was suggested that difficulties in the ‘auditory organization’ of word forms in the mental lexicon might cause reading difficulties. It was proposed that children used parameters such as rhyme and alliteration to organize word forms in the mental lexicon by acoustic similarity, and that such organization was impaired in developmental dyslexia. This literature was based on an ‘oddity’ measure of children's sensitivity to rhyme (e.g. wood, book, good) and alliteration (e.g. sun, sock, rag). The ‘oddity’ task revealed that children with dyslexia were significantly poorer at identifying the ‘odd word out’ than younger children without reading difficulties. Here we apply a novel modelling approach drawn from auditory neuroscience to study the possible sensory basis of the auditory organization of rhyming and non‐rhyming words by children. We utilize a novel Spectral‐Amplitude Modulation Phase Hierarchy (S‐AMPH) approach to analysing the spectro‐temporal structure of rhyming and non‐rhyming words, aiming to illuminate the potential acoustic cues used by children as a basis for phonological organization. The S‐AMPH model assumes that speech encoding depends on neuronal oscillatory entrainment to the amplitude modulation (AM) hierarchy in speech. Our results suggest that phonological similarity between rhyming words in the oddity task depends crucially on slow (delta band) modulations in the speech envelope. Contrary to linguistic assumptions, therefore, auditory organization by children may not depend on phonemic information for this task. Linguistically, it is assumed that ‘book’ does not rhyme with ‘wood’ and ‘good’ because the final phoneme differs. However, our auditory analysis suggests that the acoustic cues to this phonological dissimilarity depend primarily on the slower amplitude modulations in the speech envelope, thought to carry prosodic information. Therefore, the oddity task may help in detecting reading difficulties because phonological similarity judgements about rhyme reflect sensitivity to slow amplitude modulation patterns. Slower amplitude modulations are known to be detected less efficiently by children with dyslexia.