Phonological neighbourhood effects in French spoken-word recognition

According to activation-based models of spoken-word recognition, words with many and high-frequency phonological neighbours are processed more slowly than words with few and low-frequency phonological neighbours. Although considerable empirical support for inhibitory neighbourhood density effects has accumulated, especially in English, little or nothing is known about the effects of neighbourhood frequency and its interaction with neighbourhood density. In this study we examine both effects first separately and then simultaneously in French lexical decision experiments. As in English, we found that words in dense neighbourhoods are recognized more slowly than words in sparse neighbourhoods. Moreover, we showed that words with higher frequency neighbours are processed more slowly than words with no higher frequency neighbours, but only for words occurring in sparse neighbourhoods. Implications of these results for spoken-word recognition models are discussed.     

Exploring the additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency: The influence of local and list-wide prime relatedness

Stimulus quality and word frequency produce additive effects in lexical decision performance, whereas the semantic priming effect interacts with both stimulus quality and word frequency effects. This pattern places important constraints on models of visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, all three variables were investigated within a single speeded pronunciation study. The results indicated that the joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency were dependent upon prime relatedness. In particular, an additive effect of stimulus quality and word frequency was found after related primes, and an interactive effect was found after unrelated primes. It was hypothesized that this pattern reflects an adaptive reliance on related prime information within the experimental context. In Experiment 2, related primes were eliminated from the list, and the interactive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency found following unrelated primes in Experiment 1 reverted to additive effects for the same unrelated prime conditions. The results are supportive of a flexible lexical processor that adapts to both local prime information and global list-wide context.     

The word frequency effect in first- and second-language word recognition: A lexical entrenchment account

We investigate the origin of differences in the word frequency effect between native speakers and second-language speakers. In a large-scale analysis of English word identification times we find that group-level differences are fully accounted for by the individual language proficiency scores. Furthermore, exactly the same quantitative relation between word frequency and proficiency is found for monolinguals and three different bilingual populations (Dutch–English, French–English, and German–English). We conclude that the larger frequency effects for second-language processing than for native-language processing can be explained by within-language characteristics and thus need not be the consequence of “being bilingual” (i.e., a qualitative difference). More specifically, we argue that language proficiency increases lexical entrenchment, which leads to a reduced frequency effect, irrespective of bilingualism, language dominance, and language similarity.     

To what extent do we process the nondominant object in a morphed figure? Evidence from a picture–word interference task

Since the 1970s, the Heuristics and Biases Program in Cognitive Psychology has shown that people do not reason correctly about conditional probability problems. In the 1990s, however, evolutionary psychologists discovered that if the same problems are presented in a different way, people's performance greatly improves. Two explanations have been offered to account for this facilitation effect: the natural frequency hypothesis and the nested-set hypothesis. The empirical evidence on this debate is mixed. We review the literature pointing out some methodological issues that we take into account in our own present experiments. We interpret our results as suggesting that when the mentioned methodological problems are tackled, the evidence seems to favour the natural frequency hypothesis and to go against the nested-set hypothesis.     

Dynamics of upconversion photoluminescence in Ge–Ga–S: Er3+: application of quadrature frequency resolved spectroscopy

Quadrature frequency resolved spectroscopy (QFRS) on green (~550 nm) upconversion photoluminescence (UCPL) of Ge–Ga–S: Er³⁺ glasses pumped at 975 nm revealed double-peaked spectra with long lifetime τ₁ ranging from 0.2 to 2 ms and short lifetime τ₂ ≈ several tens of μs. The results are analysed in terms of the transfer function derived by linearizing rate equations for a three-level model. The τ₁ component is attributed to the relaxation at the intermediate level ⁴I_11/2 of Er³⁺ ions and the τ₂ component, to that at the upper ⁴S_3/2 manifold. The dominance of energy transfer upconversion over excited state absorption in the UCPL manifest itself as a greater dependence of τ₁ on the pump power and a lower ratio of the components of τ₂ to τ₁ in the QFRS spectra of a heavily Er-doped sample.     

Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children's reading

Children's eye movements were recorded to examine the role of word spacing and positional character frequency on the process of Chinese lexical acquisition during reading. Three types of two-character novel pseudowords were constructed: words containing characters in positions in which they frequently occurred (congruent), words containing characters in positions they do not frequently occur in (incongruent) and words containing characters that do not have a strong position bias (balanced). There were two phases within the experiment, a learning phase and a test phase. There were also two learning groups: half the children read sentences in a word-spaced format and the other half read the sentences in an unspaced format during the learning phase. All the participants read normal, unspaced text at test. A benefit of word spacing was observed in the learning phase, but not at test. Also, facilitatory effects of positional character congruency were found both in the learning and test phase; however, this benefit was greatly reduced at test. Furthermore, we did not find any interaction between word spacing and positional character frequencies, indicating that these two types of cues affect lexical acquisition independently. With respect to theoretical accounts of lexical acquisition, we argue that word spacing might facilitate the very earliest stages of word learning by clearly demarking word boundary locations. In contrast, we argue that characters' positional frequencies might affect relatively later stages of word learning.     

Eye movements in developing readers: A comparison of silent and oral sentence reading

We present sentence reading data from a large-scale study with children (N = 632), focusing on three key research questions. (1) What are the trajectories of reading development in oral as compared to silent reading? (2) How are word frequency effects developing and are changes differentially affected by reading mode? (3) Are there systematic differences between better and weaker comprehenders when reading silently vs. aloud? Results illuminate a number of differences between reading modes, including more and prolonged fixations in oral reading, along with less inter-word regressions and attenuated effects of word frequency. Weaker comprehenders were slower, especially in oral reading and showed less flexibility in the allocation of word processing time. Differences between reading modes can be explained by additional processing demands imposed by concurrent articulation and eye–voice coordination when reading aloud.     

Word frequency in fast priming: Evidence for immediate cognitive control of eye movements during reading

Numerous studies have demonstrated effects of word frequency on eye movements during reading, but the precise timing of this influence has remained unclear. The fast priming paradigm was previously used to study influences of related versus unrelated primes on the target word. Here, we use this procedure to investigate whether the frequency of the prime word has a direct influence on eye movements during reading when the prime–target relation is not manipulated. We found that with average prime intervals of 32 ms readers made longer single fixation durations on the target word in the low than in the high frequency prime condition. Distributional analyses demonstrated that the effect of prime frequency on single fixation durations occurred very early, supporting theories of immediate cognitive control of eye movements. Finding prime frequency effects only 207 ms after visibility of the prime and for prime durations of 32 ms yields new time constraints for cognitive processes controlling eye movements during reading. Our variant of the fast priming paradigm provides a new approach to test early influences of word processing on eye movement control during reading.     

On predicting others’ words: Electrophysiological evidence of prediction in speech production

The present study investigated whether lexical processes that occur when we name objects can also be observed when an interaction partner is naming objects. We compared the behavioral and electrophysiological responses of participants performing a conditional go/no-go picture naming task in two different conditions: individually and jointly with a confederate participant. To obtain an index of lexical processing, we manipulated lexical frequency, so that half of the pictures had corresponding names of high-frequency and the remaining half had names of low-frequency. Color cues determined whether participants should respond, whether their task-partner should respond, or whether nobody should respond. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants engaged in lexical processing when it was their turn to respond. Crucially, ERP results on no-go trials revealed that participants also engaged in lexical processing when it was their partner’s turn to act. In addition, ERP results showed increased response inhibition selectively when it was the partner’s turn to act. These findings provide evidence for the claim that listeners generate predictions about speakers’ utterances by relying on their own action production system.