阅读流畅性研究及其进展

从介绍两个阅读发展模型入手,探讨了阅读流畅性与阅读的关系,揭示阅读流畅性在阅读发展进程中的地位和作用,并介绍了影响阅读流畅性的因素。在此基础上,指出了阅读流畅性研究对语言认知研究的重要性,并对今后研究作了初步展望。     

The cortical organization of lexical knowledge: a dual lexicon model of spoken language processing

Current accounts of spoken language assume the existence of a lexicon where wordforms are stored and interact during spoken language perception, understanding and production. Despite the theoretical importance of the wordform lexicon, the exact localization and function of the lexicon in the broader context of language use is not well understood. This review draws on evidence from aphasia, functional imaging, neuroanatomy, laboratory phonology and behavioral results to argue for the existence of parallel lexica that facilitate different processes in the dorsal and ventral speech pathways. The dorsal lexicon, localized in the inferior parietal region including the supramarginal gyrus, serves as an interface between phonetic and articulatory representations. The ventral lexicon, localized in the posterior superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyrus, serves as an interface between phonetic and semantic representations. In addition to their interface roles, the two lexica contribute to the robustness of speech processing.     

On the Meaning of Words and Dinosaur Bones: Lexical Knowledge Without a Lexicon

Although for many years a sharp distinction has been made in language research between rules and words—with primary interest on rules—this distinction is now blurred in many theories. If anything, the focus of attention has shifted in recent years in favor of words. Results from many different areas of language research suggest that the lexicon is representationally rich, that it is the source of much productive behavior, and that lexically specific information plays a critical and early role in the interpretation of grammatical structure. But how much information can or should be placed in the lexicon? This is the question I address here. I review a set of studies whose results indicate that event knowledge plays a significant role in early stages of sentence processing and structural analysis. This poses a conundrum for traditional views of the lexicon. Either the lexicon must be expanded to include factors that do not plausibly seem to belong there; or else virtually all information about word meaning is removed, leaving the lexicon impoverished. I suggest a third alternative, which provides a way to account for lexical knowledge without a mental lexicon.     

Processing homonymy and polysemy: effects of sentential context and time-course following unilateral brain damage

The present study investigated the abilities of left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) non-fluent aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD), and normal control individuals to access, in sentential biasing contexts, the multiple meanings of three types of ambiguous words, namely homonyms (e.g., "punch"), metonymies (e.g., "rabbit"), and metaphors (e.g., "star"). Furthermore, the predictions of the "suppression deficit" and "coarse semantic coding" hypotheses, which have been proposed to account for RH language function/dysfunction, were tested. Using an auditory semantic priming paradigm, ambiguous words were incorporated in dominant- or subordinate-biasing sentence-primes followed after a short (100 ms) or long (1,000 ms) interstimulus interval (ISI) by dominant-meaning-related, subordinate-meaning-related or unrelated target words. For all three types of ambiguous words, both the effects of context and ISI were obvious in the performance of normal control subjects, who showed multiple meaning activation at the short ISI, but eventually, at the long ISI, contextually appropriate meaning selection. Largely similar performance was exhibited by the LHD non-fluent aphasic patients as well. In contrast, RHD patients showed limited effects of context, and no effects of the time-course of processing. In addition, although homonymous and metonymous words showed similar patterns of activation (i.e., both meanings were activated at both ISIs), RHD patients had difficulties activating the subordinate meanings of metaphors, suggesting a selective problem with figurative meanings. Although the present findings do not provide strong support for either the "coarse semantic coding" or the "suppression deficit" hypotheses, they are viewed as being more consistent with the latter, according to which RH damage leads to deficits suppressing alternative meanings of ambiguous words that become incompatible with the context.     

Infants' comprehension of toy replicas as symbols for real objects

Infants' understanding of toy model-real exemplar relations was assessed through preferential looking and habituation tasks. Results from the preferential looking task suggest that 18-month toddlers are just beginning to demonstrate comprehension of symbolic relations between iconic models and their real object counterparts. Performance of 10- and 14-month-old infants in the preferential looking task did not improve when across-domain pairs of videos were used in place of within-domain pairs. Habituation task results indicated that 10-month-olds do not comprehend symbolic relations between miniature toy replicas and their "real" counterparts, but that such understanding begins to emerge by age 14 months. Interactions between symbolic processing and early lexical development are considered, as are methodological implications for the study of infant categorization.     

On the representation of Portuguese gender-inflected words in the mental lexicon

This study aims at verifying whether Portuguese gender-inflected nouns and adjectives are represented as full forms as suggested by Spanish data (Dominguez, Cuetos, & Segui, 1999). A series of lexical decision experiments is reported. Grammatical gender, frequency dominance, and grammatical category are manipulated and cumulative frequency is controlled. The results do not provide support for a full form representation of gender-inflected words. They suggest that grammatical category, or the nature of the inflectional process involved (lexical or syntactic), affects the way words are represented and accessed. Shorter recognition latencies were obtained for nouns drawn from Feminine dominant gender-inflected pairs than from Masculine dominant pairs whereas a tendency in the opposite direction was observed in adjectives. The effect of frequency dominance appears, nevertheless, to be restricted to feminine nouns. The data are compatible with the view that masculine nouns and adjectives are represented as gender-unmarked forms. These results are discussed in relation to current dual-access models of word recognition and to the notion of "interpretability" of lexico-syntactic features, as put forward in the Minimalist Program of Generative Linguistics.     

The word frequency effect in picture naming: contrasting two hypotheses using homonym pictures

Models of speech production disagree on whether or not homonyms have a shared word-form representation. To investigate this issue, a picture-naming experiment was carried out using Dutch homonyms of which both meanings could be presented as a picture. Naming latencies for the low-frequency meanings of homonyms were slower than for those of the high-frequency meanings. However, no frequency effect was found for control words, which matched the frequency of the homonyms' meanings. Subsequent control experiments indicated that the difference in naming latencies for the homonyms could be attributed to processes earlier than word-form retrieval. Specifically, it appears that low name agreement slowed down the naming of the low-frequency homonym pictures.     

Neighbourhood effects on error rates in speech production

Models of speech production differ on whether phonological neighbourhoods should affect processing, and on whether effects should be facilitatory or inhibitory. Inhibitory effects of large neighbourhoods have been argued to underlie apparent anti-frequency effects, whereby high-frequency default features are more prone to mispronunciation errors than low-frequency nondefault features. Data from the original SLIPs experiments that found apparent anti-frequency effects are analysed for neighbourhood effects. Effects are facilitatory: errors are significantly less likely for words with large numbers of neighbours that share the characteristic that is being primed for error ("friends"). Words in the neighbourhood that do not share the target characteristic ("enemies") have little effect on error rates. Neighbourhood effects do not underlie the apparent anti-frequency effects. Implications for models of speech production are discussed.     

The effect of grammatical gender and semantic context on lexical access in Italian using a timed word-naming paradigm

The effects of sentence context and grammatical gender on lexical access were investigated in Italian using a timed word-naming paradigm. Large main effects of both sentence context and the gender of the article were observed; the interaction between gender and semantics was significant over subjects. Strong facilitation by both gender and semantics was observed, relative to a neutral-control baseline condition. Results are compared with (1) a prior study with the same design, using a picture-naming paradigm, except that objects described by written words were replaced by pictures (Bentrovato, Devescovi, D'Amico, & Bates, 1999); (2) a separate norming study of timed word reading in a list format, using the same stimuli (D'Amico, Devescovi, & Bates, 2001); and (3) a prior study of German comparing word and picture naming in short, semantically neutral phrases (Jacobsen, 1999). Differences in methodology and in findings between the Italian word naming and the German word naming are compared and discussed. Findings of the present study are interpreted in support of interactive-activation models in which different sources of information are combined on-line to predict, anticipate, or preactivate lexical targets.