Memory for sentences and noun phrases of extreme depth

Memory for orally presented noun phrases and sentences was investigated in two experiments. Syntactic depth (D) of the phrases and sentences was varied with D approaching the values of 7 ± 2. Consistent with recent investigations, these studies found D not to be generally related to recall of sentences, phrases, or individual words within sentences. However, recall of individual words from an adverbial noun phrase apparently was related to D. The apparent relationship is accounted for not by depth of individual words, but in terms primarily of superior noun retention and its interaction with serial position effects. In addition, conditional recall probabilities for another type of phrase, a noun phrase with prenominal adjectives, indicate stronger relationships between adjectives and the noun than between successive adjectives. It is concluded that the Yngve grammar is deficient as a psycholinguistic model.     

SEMANTIC AND PHONOLOGICAL CODING PROCESSES IN SKILLED AND LESS SKILLED READERS' READING OF TEXT

Abstract

Two experiments examine the memory coding processes of skilled and less skilled readers during the reading of connected text. In experiment 1, students read several paragraphs which required a lexical decision about an underlined letter string within a sentence. Underlined letter strings were either synonyms, repeated words, or control words in reference to items in the sentence. Students were later asked to recall words related to their lexical decision, as well as verify the occurrence of sentences from the text. Skilled readers recalled more synonyms than poor readers, whereas no differences emerged between groups in their recall of other types of words related to the lexical task or for the verification of sentences. Experiment 2 procedures were similar to Experiment 1, except that synonyms were replaced with homophones and the sentence verification task included phrases related to the homophones. When compared to less skilled readers, skilled readers recalled more homophones and repeated words, but were more likely to be disrupted in correct verification of sentences with homophones. Taken together, the experiments suggest that along with phonological coding, semantic processing contributes an important amount of variance to deficiencies in the reading of connected text.     

The effects of delayed auditory feedback on the overt behaviors of stutterers

This study investigated the differential effect of delayed auditory feedback (DAF) upon general (e.g., repetitions) and specific (e.g., repetitions of initial, medial, and final syllables) overt types of dysfluent behaviors. Ten moderate to severe stutterers performed an oral reading task under both NDAF and DAF (200 msec). DAF resulted in a significant increase in the total number of dysfluencies but had a differential effect upon certain general and specific behaviors. Blocks decreased significantly, prolongations increased significantly, and repetitions and interjections did not change significantly in frequency of occurence. To a limited extent, DAF had a differential effect on specific behaviors. All specific prolongation behaviors increased significantly while only one specific block behavior (ddelays in starting words) decreased. The authors discuss these results in terms of the vocal changes that occurred under DAF and speculate as to their importance in establishing fluency. DAF is viewed as promoting prolongations and prolongations are viewed as inhibiting excessive stoppages of the breathstream, thus promoting fluency (e.g., delays in starting words).     

Linguistic features of dysfluencies in Parkinson Disease

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine dysfluency characteristics of individuals with Parkinson Disease (PD) relative to linguistic features of grammatical class and position within word. Few studies have reported dysfluency characteristics of PD relative to these characteristics. Those that do report on these characteristics include one case study and a study of six individuals with PD. No previous research is known to have examined dysfluency related to grammatical class and position within words for a large sample of individuals with PD.MethodDysfluencies from 32 individuals with PD were analyzed according to position within a word and grammatical class.ResultsParticipants produced significantly more dysfluencies in the initial position of words compared to medial or final positions, and a significantly higher percent dysfluency for content words versus function words.ConclusionEffects of linguistic features of grammatical class and position within a word on dysfluencies are present within a population with PD and are similar to the linguistic features associated with developmental stuttering. Clinical implications of the effect of linguistic features on speech dysfluencies in PD are discussed.     

The influence of multiple readings on the missing-letter effect revisited

In searching for a target letter while reading, participants make more omissions when the target letter is embedded in frequent function words than when it is embedded in less frequent content words. According to the guidance-organization (GO) model, this occurs because high-frequency function words are processed faster than low-frequency content words, leaving less time available for letter processing. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments by increasing word-processing speed through text repetition, which should translate into higher omission rates. Participants either read the text and searched for the target letter once or read the text three times and searched for a target letter on all readings or the final reading only. In all the experiments in which participants could not anticipate the target letter to be used, results revealed the presence of a large missing-letter effect that was unaffected by familiarity with the text. In addition, when participants knew from the start the target letter to be used on the final reading, the missing-letter effect was eliminated. Repeated search of the same text for different targets increased omissions equally for function words and content words, but this finding was present even when a new text was used, suggesting that repetition of the search task, rather than familiarity with the text, was responsible.     

Interpreting elliptical verb phrases

Elliptical verb phrases are anaphoric expressions whose correct interpretation depends on the exact form of the preceding text as well as its meaning. However, people are not very good at remembering surface details of what they read or hear, so how do they understand such expressions? One alternative to a linguistically based interpretation of elliptical verb phrases is to assign them meanings that are plausible, given general knowledge about the situation being described. In an experiment, subjects read passages in which context provided a plausible interpretation for an elliptical verb phrase that either was or was not at odds with the linguistically correct interpretation. There was a tendency for subjects to assign plausible, but incorrect, meanings to elliptical verb phrases. This tendency increased with the distance between the elliptical verb phrase and its antecedent. Incorrect interpretations were assigned slowly, and the speed of assignment increased with distance from the antecedent. These results suggest that people try to interpret elliptical verb phrases correctly, but that they are not always able to do so. Furthermore, they indicate that the intuition that elliptical verb phrases are easy to interpret is misleading. If text is to be comprehensible, speakers and writers must use such expressions with care.     

Critical words and the locus of stuttering in speech

The locus of stuttering in the communicative speech of 26 stutterers was studied in situations where subjects received and conveyed specific information. It was hypothesized that a larger proportion of critical rather than noncritical words would be stuttered. Critical words were those which necessarily had to be pronounced if a listener should be able to understand and act according to the messages given. The critical words were selected by the experimenter before the experiment started. The results showed that 35.8% of the critical and 8.4% of the noncritical words were stuttered. There was also significantly more stuttering on critical words than on long noncritical words. The largest proportion of critical words appeared in the final position of sentences, which was also where most stuttering was located. Whole-word repetitions, an instance of normal nonfluency, were associated with noncritical words. No correlation between frequency of stuttering and whole-word repetitions was found.     

The return of “visiting relatives”: Pragmatic effects in sentence processing

Two experiments were performed to investigate the role of syntactic and pragmatic cues on the disambiguation of noun phrases of the form VERB+ing NOUN+s, like visiting relatives, that can be interpreted as either singular or plural noun phrases. Both experiments used a self-paced reading task in which reading times were measured for two words, a verb and an adverb, immediately following the potentially ambiguous noun phrase. The interpretation of the noun phrase as singular or plural was biased by pragmatic cues in the first experiment and by syntactic cues in the second experiment. In both experiments, subjects were faster to read the adverb following the verb when the interpretation biased by the cues agreed in number with the verb that immediately followed the target noun phrase than when it did not agree with the verb. These results suggest that pragmatic cues, like syntactic cues, can be utilized rapidly in sentence processing.     

Cross-modality priming for individual words in memory for coherent texts

This study explores implicit memory within the domain of text processing. Three experiments were designed to study cross-modality priming in a word-stem completion test following presentation of target words in the context of a coherent text. Four main results emerged. First, we found a significant priming effect for words previously studied in a text, this priming is higher with low-frequency words than with high-frequency words. Second, subjects demonstrated more repetition priming when study and test modalities matched than when they were different. Third, the magnitude of the priming effect in the visual condition varied with the perceptual processing of the text read. Fourth, priming effects did not depend on subjects' remembering of the words of text read as measured by a yes/no recognition test since no modality effect was found in this latter memory test. These results challenge Levy's (1993) view and are discussed in the framework of the transfer-appropriate processing view proposed by Roediger, Weldon and Challis (1989).     

颜色交替文本促进小学高年级聋生篇章阅读的眼动研究

聋生由于听力损失,导致其在阅读方面存在一定的困难。如何提高聋生的阅读效率是一个具有重要的实践价值的课题。本研究采用眼动追踪技术,以29名小学高年级聋生为研究对象,考察颜色交替词标记形式对小学高年级聋生篇章阅读的促进作用。结果发现,无论是眼动指标的整体分析还是局部分析,均支持颜色交替词标记文本可以有效地提高小学高年级聋生的语篇阅读效率。本研究结果对于训练提高小学高年级聋生的阅读效率具有一定的启发意义。     

颜色交替文本促进小学高年级聋生篇章阅读的眼动研究

聋生由于听力损失,导致其在阅读方面存在一定的困难。如何提高聋生的阅读效率是一个具有重要的实践价值的课题。本研究采用眼动追踪技术,以29名小学高年级聋生为研究对象,考察颜色交替词标记形式对小学高年级聋生篇章阅读的促进作用。结果发现,无论是眼动指标的整体分析还是局部分析,均支持颜色交替词标记文本可以有效地提高小学高年级聋生的语篇阅读效率。本研究结果对于训练提高小学高年级聋生的阅读效率具有一定的启发意义。     

What is the optimal position of low-frequency words across line boundaries? An eye movement investigation

When displaying text on a page or a screen, only a finite number of characters can be presented on a single line. If the text exceeds that finite value, then text wrapping occurs. Often this process results in longer, more difficult to process words being positioned at the start of a line. We conducted an eye movement study to examine how this artefact of text wrapping affects passage reading. This allowed us to answer the question: should word difficulty be used when determining line breaks? Thirty-nine participants read 20 passages where low-frequency target words were either line-initial or line-final. There was no statistically reliable effect of our manipulation on passage reading time or comprehension despite several effects at a local level. Regarding our primary research question, the evidence suggests that word difficulty may not need to be accounted for when determining line breaks and assigning words to new lines.     

Recurrent speech patterns as cues to the segmentation of multisyllabic sequences.

First and second language acquisition both require that speech be segmented into familiar, multiphonemic units (e.g., words and common phrases). The present research examines one segmentation cue that is of considerable theoretical interest: the repetition of fixed sequences of speech. On each trial, subjects heard repetitions ('pre-exposures') of two artificially-constructed, multisyllabic patterns that shared an embedded segment 1 or 2 syllables long (e.g., 2 shared syllables: [ga-li-SE] and [li-SE-stu]). There were 2 and 6, 4 and 4, or 6 and 2 repetitions of the two patterns, randomly ordered. Subjects were then to indicate the groupings they perceived within a subsequent, longer sequence containing both of the pre-exposed patterns (e.g., [ga-li-SE-stu]). Responses varied systematically with the size of the embedded segment, the repetition frequencies of the two pre-exposed patterns, and the serial position of each pre-exposure. The results illustrate how investigations of the processing of speech patterns may contribute to an understanding of some elementary aspects of language learning.     

Interaction of stimulus and contextual information during reading: Identifying words within sentences

In general, studies on the effects of a sentence context on word identification have focused on how context affects the efficiency of processing a single target word, presented separately from the context. Such studies probably would be incapable of measuring contextual facilitation resulting from cascaded or parallel processing of neighboring words within a sentence. To measure these and other types of facilitation, we presented entire phrases and sentences for subjects to read as fast as possible and to monitor for nonwords. Subjects read at rates representative of natural reading. Experiment 1 demonstrated a large contextual facilitation effect on decision time. Experiment 2 showed that facilitation is caused by specific semantic information and, perhaps to a greater degree, by nonpredictive syntactic information. Experiment 3 showed that the amount of facilitation is greater than could be accounted for by separate contributions from autonomous word level and sentence level processes. These results present difficulties for an autonomous model of reading, but are consistent with interactive models, in which the results of ongoing sentential analyses are combined with stimulus information to identify words.     

Surface dyslexia

Two cases of surface dyslexia are described. In this disorder, irregular words such as broad or steak are less likely to be read aloud correctly than regularly-spelled words like breed or steam; and when irregular words are misread the incorrect response is often a regularisation (reading broad as "brode" and steak as "steek, for example). When reading comprehension was tested, homophones were often confused with each other: for example, soar was understood as an instrument for cutting, and route was understood as being part of a tree. Spelling was also impaired, with the majority of spelling errors being phonologically correct: for example, "search" was spelled surch. "Orthographic" errors in reading aloud (omitting, altering, adding or transposing letters) were also noted. These errors were not due to defects at elementary levels of visual processing.

One of our cases was a developmental dyslexic, and the other was an acquired dyslexic. The close similarity of their reading and spelling performance supports the view that surface dyslexia can cccur both as a developmental and as an acquired dyslexia.

A theoretical interpretation of surface dyslexia within the framework of the logogen model (including a grapheme-phoneme correspondence system for reading non-words) was offered: defects within the input logogen system, and in communication from that system to semantics, were postulated as responsible for most of the symptoms of surface dyslexia.     

Covert attention and eye movements during reading

Eye movements were monitored during the reading of spatially transformed text in order to examine covert attentional processes in reading. In some conditions, the sequence of letters within a word was congruent with (i.e. in the same direction as) the sequence of words in the sentence; in other conditions the direction of letters within words and the direction of words in the sentence were incongruent. In addition, the window of visible text was varied so that in some conditions only the fixated word (and all preceding words) were visible, whereas in other conditions the fixated word and the succeeding word were both visible. Readers were able to extract more parafoveal information from text when the words themselves were normal than when the letters within the words were transformed. However, with practice, readers were able to use some parafoveal information even when the words were transformed. The most important finding was that the congruity of the word and letter order had no reliable effect on the ability to extract parafoveal information and influenced reading performance only when the words themselves were normal. We conclude that covert attention in reading is not a letter-by-letter scan that sweeps across the page, but either an asymmetric spotlight held constant on each fixation or a shifting of an attentional spotlight extending across multiletter units (possibly words) with the direction of shifts of attention closely coupled to the direction of eye movements.     

How Word Familiarity Facilitates Visual Search for Verbal Material

Two experiments assessed the impact of word familiarity on visual search for phrases. Participants' eye movements were recorded while they memorized target phrases and then searched for them within more or less similar phrases. The phrases were written with either familiar or unfamiliar, neuroscience‐specific vocabulary. Most participants did not search for the target by reading lines in a systematic way but scanned the first words of phrases to identify those beginning with the same words as the target. Visual search for unfamiliar target phrases was associated with an increase in the number of non‐target phrases that were scanned. The only search phase during which fixation durations depended on word familiarity was the final recognition of the target phrase. Hence, the data support a model of search within menu‐like displays in which searchers primarily rely on fast, visual match mechanisms and engage in reading‐like processing only during the critical decision‐making phase. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Taking the “text” out of context effects in repetition priming of word identification

Repetition priming of masked word identification is reduced when initial exposure to target words is in a text rather than in a word list. We demonstrate that there is nothing special about the text context that reduces priming. In Experiment 1, target words read in normal text or in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) text--either coherent or scrambled--produced similarly reduced priming, relative to the same words read aloud in a list. In Experiment 2, the delay was decreased between study and test for words presented in text, but they still displayed less priming than did words presented in a study list and tested after an equivalent delay. In Experiment 3, presenting study list words in RSVP to prevent reading each word aloud diminished priming to the same level as that in the text context. We conclude that presenting a target in context prevents it from being encoded and responded to as distinctively as when presented in isolation.     

Perceptual and Conceptual Priming of Individual Words in Coherent Texts

This study explores implicit memory within the domain of text processing. Three experiments were designed to study priming in word-fragment completion, wordstem completion, and free association tests following presentation of target words in the context of a coherent text. In order to examine the time course of perceptual and conceptual processes we investigated the priming effects by manipulating the perceptual context in which the target words had been read and the time given to the subjects for each test-cue. Three main results emerged. First, we found a significant priming effect in the three implicit tests for words previously studied in a text. Second, the magnitude of the priming effect only varied when the task demands required perceptual and conceptual processing, as was the case with the completion tests. Third, priming effects did not depend on subjects' comprehension of the text read. These results are discussed in the framework of the transfer appropriate processing view proposed by Roediger, Weldon, and Challis (1989).     

Effect of speech task on intelligibility in dysarthria: a case study of Parkinson's disease

This study assessed intelligibility in a dysarthric patient with Parkinson's disease (PD) across five speech production tasks: spontaneous speech, repetition, reading, repeated singing, and spontaneous singing, using the same phrases for all but spontaneous singing. The results show that this speaker was significantly less intelligible when speaking spontaneously than in the other tasks. Acoustic analysis suggested that relative intensity and word duration were not independently linked to intelligibility, but dysfluencies (from perceptual analysis) and articulatory/resonance patterns (from acoustic records) were related to intelligibility in predictable ways. These data indicate that speech production task may be an important variable to consider during the evaluation of dysarthria. As speech production efficiency was found to vary with task in a patient with Parkinson's disease, these results can be related to recent models of basal ganglia function in motor performance.