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.     

Lexical representation of schwa words: two mackerels, but only one salami

The present study investigated the lexical representations underlying the production of English schwa words. Two types of schwa words were compared: words with a schwa in poststress position (e.g., mackerel), whose schwa and reduced variants differ in a categorical way, and words with a schwa in prestress position (e.g., salami), whose variants differ in a noncategorical way. Participants named pseudohomophones and matched pseudowords corresponding to schwa and reduced variants of these words. Results revealed an advantage for pseudohomophones over matched pseudowords for both variants of poststress schwa words but only for schwa variants of prestress schwa words. As the pseudohomophone advantage is assumed to reflect the activation of a phonologically matching stored phonological representation, these results suggest that both variants of poststress schwa words are lexically represented while only schwa variants of prestress schwa words are. This result extends the proposal that words with two categorically distinct variants are stored in the production lexicon with 2 representations to another language and demonstrates that this 2-lexeme account does not generalize to pronunciation variants differing from one another in a noncategorical fashion. This finding challenges one of the widely shared assumption of generative models of word production: that content words have only 1 phonological representation. On the other hand, it provides further evidence in favor of another fundamental assumption of these models: that lexical representations are abstract sets of segments rather than fully detailed exemplars.     

Newly learned spoken words show long-term lexical competition effects

Newly learned spoken words (e.g., “cathedruke”) become fully engaged in the mental lexicon, as measured via lexical competition with their pre-existing phonological neighbours (e.g., “cathedral”), over the course of several hours or days, and this lexical restructuring is associated with sleep (Dumay & Gaskell, 2007). Here, we investigated the longer-term effects of word learning for three sets of novel words learned at different times using phoneme monitoring and repetition tasks. The effects of these exposure sessions on lexical memory were assessed in a battery of tests. Lexical decision latencies to pre-existing neighbouring words showed that lexical competition effects for the novel words remained observable 8 months after initial exposure. Furthermore, the order-of-acquisition of the novel words affected their production speed (but not recognition speed), with an advantage for earlier acquired words. The results suggest that the consolidation of novel words results in a long-term and stable change in the lexical competition process.     

Newly learned spoken words show long-term lexical competition effects

Newly learned spoken words (e.g., “cathedruke”) become fully engaged in the mental lexicon, as measured via lexical competition with their pre-existing phonological neighbours (e.g., “cathedral”), over the course of several hours or days, and this lexical restructuring is associated with sleep (Dumay & Gaskell, 2007). Here, we investigated the longer-term effects of word learning for three sets of novel words learned at different times using phoneme monitoring and repetition tasks. The effects of these exposure sessions on lexical memory were assessed in a battery of tests. Lexical decision latencies to pre-existing neighbouring words showed that lexical competition effects for the novel words remained observable 8 months after initial exposure. Furthermore, the order-of-acquisition of the novel words affected their production speed (but not recognition speed), with an advantage for earlier acquired words. The results suggest that the consolidation of novel words results in a long-term and stable change in the lexical competition process.     

Naming regular and exception words: Further examination of the effect of phonological dissension among lexical neighbours

Abstract

It is generally assumed that visual word recognition is accompanied by the activation of lexical representations corresponding to words orthographically similar to the target (neighbours). With regard to the pronunciation of their constituent units, these words can either converge with or diverge from the target pronunciation. The role of the frequency of the divergent pronunciations in print-to-sound conversion was examined in a naming experiment in which subjects pronounced regular and exception words. The results showed that naming latencies for exception words were affected by the orthographic similarity of the target with frequent phonologically divergent words (enemies). In a similar vein, regular words which include the letters G or C (whose pronunciations are contextually determined) and which are orthographically similar to words favouring an incorrect pronunciation of the letter took longer to pronounce than regular controls. A delayed naming experiment indicated that these differences were not attributable to the articulatory characteristics of the items. Finally, it also appeared that enemy frequency influenced naming latencies but not regularisation rates and regularisation latencies. The results are discussed within the framework of current dual-route and parallel distributed processing models of reading.     

Lexical characteristics of words used in emotional Stroop experiments

Validity of the emotional Stroop task hinges on equivalence between the emotion and the control words in terms of lexical features related to word recognition. The authors evaluated the lexical features of 1,033 words used in 32 published emotional Stroop studies. Emotion words were significantly lower in frequency of use, longer in length, and had smaller orthographic neighborhoods than words used as controls. These lexical features contribute to slower word recognition and hence are likely to contribute to delayed latencies in color naming. The often-replicated slowdown in color naming of emotion words may be due, in part, to lexical differences between the emotion and control words used in the majority of such studies to date.     

Naming multisyllabic words

The process of reading multisyllabic words aloud from print was examined in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 used multisyllabic words that vary in terms of the consistency of component spelling-sound correspondences. The stimuli were regular, regular inconsistent, and exception words analogous to the monosyllabic items used in previous studies. Both regular inconsistent and exception words produced longer naming latencies than regular words. In Experiment 2 these differences between word types were found to be limited to lower frequency items. Experiment 3 showed that effects of number of syllables on naming latency are also limited to lower frequency words when the stimulus display forced subjects to use syllabic units. Thus, frequency modulates the effects of two aspects of lexical structure-consistency of spelling-sound correspondences and number of syllables. The results suggest that the naming of multisyllabic words draws on some of the same knowledge representations and processes as monosyllabic words; however, naming does not require syllabic decomposition. The results are discussed in the context of current models of naming.     

Naming cAsE aLtErNaTeD words

A dual-route approach was used as an initial framework to examine the relation between presentation format and lexical processing in a naming task. In Experiments 1 and 3, words were presented in lowercase versus case-alternated format. Presentation format interacted with word frequency and regularity: For irregular words (e.g., pint), case alternation was additive with frequency, whereas for regular words (e.g., mint), case alternation and frequency interacted. Experiment 2 dissociated the locus of case-alternation effects from those of stimulus intensity. Stimulus intensity was additive with frequency and regularity, suggesting that whereas stimulus intensity affects encoding, case alternation affects lexical processing at a postencoding stage in the word recognition system. It was concluded that a dual-route approach provides a suggestive but incomplete account of how case alternation influences lexical processing. As an alternative to a dual-route approach, we show that the present results can be addressed and successfully simulated using an implemented version of Norris's (1994) multilevel model.     

Processing variant forms in spoken word recognition: the role of variant frequency

Recognition of a spoken word phonological variant--schwa vowel deletion (e.g., corporate --> corp'rate)--was investigated in vowel detection (absent/present) and syllable number judgment (two or three syllables) tasks. Variant frequency corpus analyses (Patterson, LoCasto, & Connine, 2003) were used to select words with either high or low schwa vowel deletion rates. Speech continua were created for each word in which schwa vowel length was manipulated (unambiguous schwa-present and schwa-absent endpoints, along with intermediate ambiguous tokens). Matched control nonwords were created with identical schwa vowel continua and surrounding segments. The low-deletion-rate words showed more three-syllable judgments than did the high-deletion-rate words. Matched control nonwords did not differ as a function of deletion rate. Experiments 2 and 3 showed a lexical decision reaction time advantage for more frequent surface forms, as compared with infrequent ones, for schwa-deleted (Experiment 2) and schwa-present (Experiment 3) stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of representations of variant forms of words based on variant frequency.     

Iconic gestures prime words

Using a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm, both experiments of the present study investigated the link between the mental representations of iconic gestures and words. Two groups of the participants performed a primed lexical decision task where they had to discriminate between visually presented words and nonwords (e.g., flirp). Word targets (e.g., bird) were preceded by video clips depicting either semantically related (e.g., pair of hands flapping) or semantically unrelated (e.g., drawing a square with both hands) gestures. The duration of gestures was on average 3,500 ms in Experiment 1 but only 1,000 ms in Experiment 2. Significant priming effects were observed in both experiments, with faster response latencies for related gesture-word pairs than unrelated pairs. These results are consistent with the idea of interactions between the gestural and lexical representational systems, such that mere exposure to iconic gestures facilitates the recognition of semantically related words.     

The Calgary semantic decision project: concrete/abstract decision data for 10,000 English words

Psycholinguistic research has been advanced by the development of word recognition megastudies. For instance, the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) provides researchers with access to naming and lexical-decision latencies for over 40,000 words. In the present work, we extended the megastudy approach to a task that emphasizes semantic processing. Using a concrete/abstract semantic decision (i.e., does the word refer to something concrete or abstract?), we collected decision latencies and accuracy rates for 10,000 English words. The stimuli were concrete and abstract words selected from Brysbaert, Warriner, and Kuperman’s (2013) comprehensive list of concreteness ratings. In total, 321 participants provided responses to 1,000 words each. Whereas semantic effects tend to be quite modest in naming and lexical decision studies, analyses of the concrete/abstract semantic decision responses show that a substantial proportion of variance can be explained by semantic variables. The item-level and trial-level data will be useful for other researchers interested in the semantic processing of concrete and abstract words.     

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.     

Asymmetries in the processing of Arabic digits and number words

Numbers can be represented as Arabic digits ("6") or as number words ("six"). The present study investigated potential processing differences between the two notational formats. In view of the previous finding (e.g., Potter & Faulconer, 1975) that objects are named slower, but semantically categorized faster, than corresponding words, it was investigated whether a similar interaction between stimulus format and task could be obtained with numbers. Experiment 1 established that number words were named faster than corresponding digits, but only if the two notation formats were presented in separate experimental blocks. Experiment 2 contrasted naming with a numerical magnitude judgment task and demonstrated an interaction between notation and task, with slower naming but faster magnitude judgment latencies for digits than for number words. These findings suggest that processing of the two notation formats is asymmetric, with digits gaining rapid access to numerical magnitude representations, but slower access to lexical codes, and the reverse for number words.     

How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times, and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7–44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5–17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to 0.2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye–mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts.     

Imageability estimates for 3,000 disyllabic words

We provide imageability estimates for 3,000 disyllabic words (as supplementary materials that may be downloaded with the article from www.springerlink.com ). Imageability is a widely studied lexical variable believed to influence semantic and memory processes (see, e.g., Paivio, 1971). In addition, imageability influences basic word recognition processes (Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996). In fact, neuroimaging studies have suggested that reading high- and low-imageable words elicits distinct neural activation patterns for the two types e.g., Bedny & Thompson-Schill (Brain and Language 98:127-139, 2006; Graves, Binder, Desai, Conant, & Seidenberg NeuroImage 53:638-646, 2010). Despite the usefulness of this variable, imageability estimates have not been available for large sets of words. Furthermore, recent megastudies of word processing e.g., Balota et al. (Behavior Research Methods 39:445-459, 2007) have expanded the number of words that interested researchers can select according to other lexical characteristics (e.g., average naming latencies, lexical decision times, etc.). However, the dearth of imageability estimates (as well as those of other lexical characteristics) limits the items that researchers can include in their experiments. Thus, these imageability estimates for disyllabic words expand the number of words available for investigations of word processing, which should be useful for researchers interested in the influences of imageability both as an input and as an outcome variable.     

The specific-word frequency effect: implications for the representation of homophones in speech production.

In a series of experiments, the authors investigated whether naming latencies for homophones (e.g., /nlambdan/) are a function of specific-word frequency (i.e., the frequency of nun) or a function of cumulative-homophone frequency (i.e., the sum of the frequencies of nun and none). Specific-word but not cumulative-homophone frequency affected picture-naming latencies. This result was obtained in 2 languages (English and Chinese). An analogous finding was obtained in a translation task, where bilingual speakers produced the English names of visually presented Spanish words. Control experiments ruled out that these results are an artifact of orthographic or articulatory factors, or of visual recognition. The results argue against the hypothesis that homophones share a common word-form representation, and support instead a model in which homophones have fully independent representations.     

Automatic vigilance for negative words in lexical decision and naming: comment on Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (2006)

An automatic vigilance hypothesis states that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli, and this attention to negative valence disrupts the processing of other stimulus properties. Thus, negative words typically elicit slower color naming, word naming, and lexical decisions than neutral or positive words. Larsen, Mercer, and Balota analyzed the stimuli from 32 published studies, and they found that word valence was confounded with several lexical factors known to affect word recognition. Indeed, with these lexical factors covaried out, Larsen et al. found no evidence of automatic vigilance. The authors report a more sensitive analysis of 1011 words. Results revealed a small but reliable valence effect, such that negative words (e.g., "shark") elicit slower lexical decisions and naming than positive words (e.g., "beach"). Moreover, the relation between valence and recognition was categorical rather than linear; the extremity of a word's valence did not affect its recognition. This valence effect was not attributable to word length, frequency, orthographic neighborhood size, contextual diversity, first phoneme, or arousal. Thus, the present analysis provides the most powerful demonstration of automatic vigilance to date.     

The specific-word frequency effect in speech production: Evidence from Spanish and French

The role of word frequency in lexical access during the production of homophones remains unresolved. In the current study, we address whether specific-word (the frequency of occurrence of the word “nun”) or homophone frequency (the summed frequency of words with the pronunciation /nΛn/) determines the production latencies of homophones. In Experiments 1a, 2a, and 3a, participants named pictures of high-frequency (e.g., “banco”–a bank: financial institution) and low-frequency (e.g., “banco”–park bench) Spanish (Experiments 1a and 2a) or French (Experiment 3a) homophones and control pictures of nonhomophone words matched in frequency with each of the two uses of the homophones. The naming latencies for low-frequency homophones were longer than those for high-frequency homophones. Furthermore, the naming latencies for homophones were indistinguishable from those for nonhomophone controls matched in specific-word frequency. In Experiments 1b, 2b, and 3b, the participants performed either object decision or picture–word matching tasks with the stimuli used in the corresponding Experiments 1a, 2a, and 3a. There were no reliable differences between high- and low-frequency homophones. The findings support the hypothesis that specific-word and not homophone frequency determines lexical access in speech production.     

The influence of visualization of orthography on the recognition of written words]

This paper reviews the main research that has been conducted on the role of orthographic neighbourhood in visual word recognition. We focus here on the traditionally defined neighbourhood, that is corresponding to the set of words of the same length sharing all but one letter with the stimulus. Two major theoretical frameworks, namely the activation verification and the interactive activation models, assume that orthographic neighbours are activated when a written word is presented. Predictions formulated by both models for words and pseudowords on the effects of neighbourhood size (N), neighbourhood frequency (NF), and neighbourhood distribution (P), are examined in order to assess the plausibility of serial versus interactive processes. Findings from 27 empirical studies including more than 80 experiments suggest that neighbourhood effects depend on the neighbourhood indexes (N, NF, and P), on the particular tasks (lexical decision, naming, semantic categorization, perceptual identification, and reading), and on the languages (English, French, Spanish, and Dutch) that are used. The results for words can be summarized as follows: (1) In the lexical decision task, the N effect is facilitatory. The NF effect is rather inhibitory, particularly in French and Spanish experiments. The P effect is rather inhibitory in English studies, whereas the P effect for higher frequency neighbours is facilitatory in French. (2) In the perceptual identification task with a single identification response, N and NF effects are inhibitory whatever the language. (3) In the naming task, N and NF effects are facilitatory whatever the language. (4) In the semantic categorization task, an interaction effect between N and NF is found in both English and Spanish. (5) In eye movement studies, the NF effect is inhibitory in both English and French. The issue of lexical versus task-specific processes underlying neighbourhood effects in lexical identification tasks is also examined. On the whole, facilitatory N effects are usually attributed to nonlexical processes of the lexical decision task and of the naming task, whereas inhibitory neighbourhood frequency effects are usually attributed to lexical processes, at least in lexical-decision experiments and in eye-movement studies on normal reading. The distribution of higher frequency neighbours which is found to have a facilitatory effect on French words in lexical-decision experiments can be attributed to lexical processes in the interactive activation framework. The theoretical implications of the data are discussed in light of the original activation verification and interactive activation models and in recently extended versions of these models. We conclude that the lexical inhibition hypothesis which is central in the interactive activation framework is the most appropriate to account for the role of orthographic neighbourhoods in visual word recognition.     

Lexical configuration and lexical engagement: when adults learn new words

People know thousands of words in their native language, and each of these words must be learned at some time in the person's lifetime. A large number of these words will be learned when the person is an adult, reflecting the fact that the mental lexicon is continuously changing. We explore how new words get added to the mental lexicon, and provide empirical support for a theoretical distinction between what we call lexical configuration and lexical engagement. Lexical configuration is the set of factual knowledge associated with a word (e.g., the word's sound, spelling, meaning, or syntactic role). Almost all previous research on word learning has focused on this aspect. However, it is also critical to understand the process by which a word becomes capable of lexical engagement--the ways in which a lexical entry dynamically interacts with other lexical entries, and with sublexical representations. For example, lexical entries compete with each other during word recognition (inhibition within the lexical level), and they also support the activation of their constituents (top-down lexical-phonemic facilitation, and lexically-based perceptual learning). We systematically vary the learning conditions for new words, and use separate measures of lexical configuration and engagement. Several surprising dissociations in behavior demonstrate the importance of the theoretical distinction between configuration and engagement.