Enemies and friends in the neighborhood: orthographic similarity effects in semantic categorization

Studies investigating orthographic similarity effects in semantic tasks have produced inconsistent results. The authors investigated orthographic similarity effects in animacy decision and in contrast with previous studies, they took semantic congruency into account. In Experiments 1 and 2, performance to a target (cat) was better if a previously studied neighbor (rat) was congruent (i.e., belonged to the same animate-inanimate category) than it was if it was incongruent (e.g., mat). In Experiments 3 and 4, performance was better for targets with more preexisting congruent neighbors than for targets with more preexisting incongruent neighbors. These results demonstrate that orthographic similarity effects in semantic categorization are conditional on semantic congruency. This strongly suggests that semantic information becomes available before orthographic processing has been completed.     

Semantic priming is affected by real-time phonological competition: Evidence for continuous cascading systems

Lexical-semantic access is affected by the phonological structure of the lexicon. What is less clear is whether such effects are the result of continuous activation between lexical form and semantic processing or whether they arise from a more modular system in which the timing of accessing lexical form determines the timing of semantic activation. This study examined this issue using the visual world paradigm by investigating the time course of semantic priming as a function of the number of phonological competitors. Critical trials consisted of high or low density auditory targets (e.g., horse) and a visual display containing a target, a semantically related object (e.g., saddle), and two phonologically and semantically unrelated objects (e.g., chimney, bikini). Results showed greater magnitude of priming for semantically related objects of low than of high density words, and no differences for high and low density word targets in the time course of looks to the word semantically related to the target. This pattern of results is consistent with models of cascading activation, which predict that lexical activation has continuous effects on the level of semantic activation, with no delays in the onset of semantic activation for phonologically competing words.     

Dissociated developmental trajectories for semantic and phonological false memories

False recognition following presentation of semantically related and phonologically related word lists was evaluated in 8-, 11-, and 13-year-olds. Children heard lists of words that were either semantic (e.g., bed, rest, wake ...) or phonological associates (e.g., pole, bowl, hole ...) of a critical unpresented word (e.g., sleep, roll), respectively. A semantic false memory was defined as false recognition of a semantically related but unpresented word. A phonological false memory was defined as false recognition of a phonologically related but unpresented word. False memories in the two tasks showed opposite developmental trends, increasing with age for semantic relatedness and decreasing with age for phonological relatedness.     

Dissociated developmental trajectories for semantic and phonological false memories

False recognition following presentation of semantically related and phonologically related word lists was evaluated in 8-, 11-, and 13-year-olds. Children heard lists of words that were either semantic (e.g., bed, rest, wake …) or phonological associates (e.g., pole, bowl, hole …) of a critical unpresented word (e.g., sleep, roll), respectively. A semantic false memory was defined as false recognition of a semantically related but unpresented word. A phonological false memory was defined as false recognition of a phonologically related but unpresented word. False memories in the two tasks showed opposite developmental trends, increasing with age for semantic relatedness and decreasing with age for phonological relatedness.     

Evidence for right hemisphere phonology in a backward masking task

The extent to which orthographic and phonological processes are available during the initial moments of word recognition within each hemisphere is under specified, particularly for the right hemisphere. Few studies have investigated whether each hemisphere uses orthography and phonology under constraints that restrict the viewing time of words and reduce overt phonological demands. The current study used backward masking in the divided visual field paradigm to explore hemisphere differences in the availability of orthographic and phonological word recognition processes. A 20 ms and 60 ms SOA were used to track the time course of how these processes develop during pre-lexical moments of word recognition. Nonword masks varied in similarity to the target words such that there were four types: orthographically and phonologically similar, orthographically but not phonologically similar, phonologically but not orthographically similar and unrelated. The results showed the left hemisphere has access to both orthography and phonology early in the word recognition process. With more time to process the stimulus, the left hemisphere is able to use phonology which benefits word recognition to a larger extent than orthography. The right hemisphere also demonstrates access to both orthography and phonology in the initial moments of word recognition, however, orthographic similarity improves word recognition to a greater extent than phonological similarity.     

Is phonological information mapped onto semantic information in a one-to-one manner?

Spoken word recognition models have to explain the influence of mismatching information on lexical activation. The effect of mismatching information is usually addressed with cross-modal semantic priming experiments using priming effects as a measure of the degree of lexical activation. Pseudowords phonologically related to a semantic associate of the target, e.g., *domato-PAPRIKA, serve as primes. Mismatch effects at the word form level are supposed to percolate unaltered to the semantic level. We show that cross-modal semantic priming might underestimate activation at the word form level. Targets (e.g., PAPRIKA) were preceded by either phonologically related pseudoword primes (e.g., *baprika) or semantically related pseudoword primes (e.g., *domato). Different priming and RT patterns were obtained for the two priming relations.     

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

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

Criterion bias and search sequence bias in word recognition

Six experiments that were designed to test the adequacy of criterion bias explanations of the word frequency effect and the semantic priming effect are reported. It was found that criterion bias models correctly predicted higher error rates in a lexical decision task for nonwords that were misspelled versions of high-frequency words (e.g., MOHTER), rather than low-frequency words (e.g., BOHTER). Also correct was the prediction of increased error rates for misspelled words preceded by a semantically related word (e.g., NURSE-DOTCOR). However, in a misspelling decision task (in which the subject must decide whether the stimulus is a word, a misspelled word, or a nonword), it can be argued that criterion bias should be inoperative, since correct responses must be delayed until all orthographic information has been checked; this should eliminate both frequency and semantic priming effects. This was found not to be the case; clear frequency and priming effects were obtained for both words and misspelled words.     

How do associative and phonemic overlap interact to boost illusory recollection?

This project investigated the underlying mechanisms that boost false remember responses when participants receive study words that are both semantically and phonologically similar to a critical lure. Participants completed a memory task in which they were presented with a list of words all associated with a critical lure. Included within the list of semantic associates was a target that was either semantically associated (e.g., yawn) to the critical lure (e.g., sleep) or shared the initial (e.g., slam) or final (e.g., beep) phoneme(s) with the critical lure. After hearing the list, participants recalled each list item and indicated whether they just knew it was on the list or if they instead recollected specific contextual details of that item’s presentation. We found that inserting an initial phonemic overlap target boosted experiences of recollection, but only when semantically related associates were presented beforehand. The results are consistent with models of spoken word recognition and show that established semantic context plus initial phonemic overlap play important roles in boosting false recollection.     

The impact of feedback semantics in visual word recognition: number-of-features effects in lexical decision and naming tasks

The notion of feedback activation from semantics to both orthography and phonology has recently been used to explain a number of semantic effects in visual word recognition, including polysemy effects (Hino & Lupker, 1996; Pexman & Lupker, 1999) and synonym effects (Pecher, 2001). In the present research, we tested an account based on feedback activation by investigating a new semantic variable: number of features (NOF). Words with high NOF (e.g., LION) should activate richer semantic representations than do words with low NOF (e.g., LIME). As a result, the feedback activation from semantics to orthographic and phonological representations should be greater for high-NOF words, which should produce superior lexical decision task (LDT) and naming task performance. The predicted facilitory NOF effects were observed in both LDT and naming.     

汉语词汇产生中词汇选择和音韵编码之间的交互作用

采取图画－词汇干扰实验范式,探索汉语单音节词汇产生中词汇选择和音韵编码之间的交互作用。实验一探测目标图画语义相关项的语音激活,观察到了非目标项的语音激活。实验二探测目标图画语义相关项的字形激活,未发现非目标项的字形激活。在改进实验条件的基础上,实验三验证实验一和二,并探测目标图画字形相关项的语音激活以及语音相关项的字形激活,结果未探测到语义相关项的字形或语音激活、语音相关项的字形激活,只发现了字形相关项的语音激活。实验一至三的结果表明汉语词汇产生中存在目标字字形相关项的语音激活,但不存在从音韵编码阶段至词汇选择阶段的激活反馈。综合上述结果,从是否存在多重的字形或语音激活,以及是否存在从音韵编码至词汇选择的反馈两个方面进行了讨论。研究结果倾向于支持词汇产生中层叠式理论的观点     

Strategic reliance on phonological mediation in lexical access

The present study investigated strategic variation in reliance on phonological mediation in visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, semantically related or unrelated word primes preceded word, pseudohomophone (e.g.,trane), or nonpseudohomophone (e.g.,trank) targets in a lexical decision task. Semantic priming effects were found for words, and response latencies to pseudohomophones were longer in related than in unrelated prime conditions. In Experiment 2, related or unrelated word primes preceded word or pseudohomophone targets. A relatedness effect was found for words, although it was significant at a 600-msec prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and not at a 200-msec SOA. There was no relatedness effect for pseudohomophones. Experiment 3 was a replication of Experiment 2, except that pseudohomophones were replaced by nonpseudohomophonic orthographic controls. Facilitation effects for related target words were greater in Experiment 3 than in Experiment 2. The results reflect apparent variations in the expectation that a related prime reliably indicates that a target is a word. Although reliance on phonological mediation might be strategically contingent, there could be a brief time period in which phonologically mediated lexical access occurs automatically. Whether phonological information is maintained or suppressed subsequently depends on its overall usefulness for the task.     

The processing of morpheme-like units in monomorphemic words

The word virus is not normally considered polymorphemic, yet it is clearly both semantically and orthographically related to the word viral. Thus, the subunit vir takes on the role of a bound morpheme. In contrast, the words future and futile also share a subunit (fut), but are semantically unrelated. The reported experiment demonstrates facilitation in a masked priming experiment for the semantically related pairs that share an initial orthographic subunit (e.g., virus-viral), but not for the semantically unrelated pairs (e.g., future-futile). Whether the subunit was pronounced the same way in the prime and target was shown to be irrelevant. Furthermore, semantic relatedness was insufficient to produce priming when orthography was not shared. It was concluded that, while the units of processing within the orthographic system may be the same for the two types of item, their representation at a higher level may depend on the correlation between form with meaning. For example, virus and viral might share a higher level representation and thus facilitate each other, whereas future and futile might be represented separately at that higher level and even compete with each other.     

Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database

In this article, we present Procura-PALavras (P-PAL), a Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese (EP) lexical database. Based on a contemporary printed corpus of over 227 million words, P-PAL provides a broad range of word attributes and statistics, including several measures of word frequency (e.g., raw counts, per-million word frequency, logarithmic Zipf scale), morpho-syntactic information (e.g., parts of speech [PoSs], grammatical gender and number, dominant PoS, and frequency and relative frequency of the dominant PoS), as well as several lexical and sublexical orthographic (e.g., number of letters; consonant–vowel orthographic structure; density and frequency of orthographic neighbors; orthographic Levenshtein distance; orthographic uniqueness point; orthographic syllabification; and trigram, bigram, and letter type and token frequencies), and phonological measures (e.g., pronunciation, number of phonemes, stress, density and frequency of phonological neighbors, transposed and phonographic neighbors, syllabification, and biphone and phone type and token frequencies) for ~53,000 lemmatized and ~208,000 nonlemmatized EP word forms. To obtain these metrics, researchers can choose between two word queries in the application: (i) analyze words previously selected for specific attributes and/or lexical and sublexical characteristics, or (ii) generate word lists that meet word requirements defined by the user in the menu of analyses. For the measures it provides and the flexibility it allows, P-PAL will be a key resource to support research in all cognitive areas that use EP verbal stimuli. P-PAL is freely available at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/tools.     

Phonological priming and orthographic analogies in reading

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

Phonographic neighbors,not orthographic neighbors,determine word naming latencies

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

The effect of neighborhood frequency in reading: evidence with transposed-letter neighbors

Transposed-letter effects (e.g., jugde activates judge) pose serious models for models of visual-word recognition that use position-specific coding schemes. However, even though the evidence of transposed-letter effects with nonword stimuli is strong, the evidence for word stimuli is scarce and inconclusive. The present experiment examined the effect of neighborhood frequency during normal silent reading using transposed-letter neighbors (e.g., silver, sliver). Two sets of low-frequency words were created (equated in the number of substitution neighbors, word frequency, and number of letters), which were embedded in sentences. In one set, the target word had a higher frequency transposed-letter neighbor, and in the other set, the target word had no transposed-letter neighbors. An inhibitory effect of neighborhood frequency was observed in measures that reflect late processing in words (number of regressions back to the target word, and total time). We examine the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition and reading.     

The effects of "neighborhood size" in reading and lexical decision.

The effects of neighborhood size ("N")--the number of words differing from a target word by exactly 1 letter (i.e., "neighbors")--on word identification was assessed in 3 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, the frequency of the highest frequency neighbor was equated, and N had opposite effects in lexical decision and reading. In Experiment 1, a larger N facilitated lexical decision judgments, whereas in Experiment 2, a larger N had an inhibitory effect on reading sentences that contained the words of Experiment 1. Moreover, a significant inhibitory effect in Experiment 2 that was due to a larger N appeared on gaze duration on the target word, and there was no hint of facilitation on the measures of reading that tap the earliest processing of a word. In Experiment 3, the number of higher frequency neighbors was equated for the high-N and low-N words, and a larger N caused target words to be skipped significantly more and produced inhibitory effects later in reading, some of which were plausibly due to misidentification of the target word when skipped. Regression analyses indicated that, in reading, increasing the number of higher frequency neighbors had a clear inhibitory effect on word identification and that increasing the number of lower frequency neighbors may have a weak facilitative effect on word identification.     

Differential cognitive processing of Kanji and Kana words: do orthographic and semantic codes function in parallel in word matching task.

Relative engagements of the orthographic and semantic codes in Kanji and Hiragana word recognition were investigated. In Exp. 1, subjects judged whether the pairs of Kanji words (prime and target) presented sequentially were physically identical to each other in the word condition. In the sentence condition, subjects decided whether the target word was valid for the prime sentence presented in advance. The results showed that the response times to the target swords orthographically similar (to the prime) were significantly slower than to semantically related target words in the word condition and that this was also the case in the sentence condition. In Exp. 2, subjects judged whether the target word written in Hiragana was physically identical to the prime word in the word condition. In the sentence condition, subjects decided if the target word was valid for the previously presented prime sentence. Analysis indicated that response times to orthographically similar words were slower than to semantically related words in the word condition but not in the sentence condition wherein the response times to the semantically and orthographically similar words were largely the same. Based on these results, differential contributions of orthographic and semantic codes in cognitive processing of Japanese Kanji and Hiragana words was discussed.