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.     

Congruency effects in conceptualizing for speech

In naming a picture at the basic level, a semantically related distractor word induces interference in comparison to an unrelated word. When the task is changed from basic-level naming to categorization, however, this effect reverses to semantic facilitation. In previous studies, this semantic facilitation effect was attributed to “message congruency” at the conceptual level. The present study examines the nature of this message congruency effect: Is it due to competition between two activated category concepts in the incongruent condition or is it due to convergence of activity on a single category concept in the congruent condition? Two experiments show that neither the strength with which the context stimulus activates an incongruent category concept nor the semantic distance between the category concepts activated by target and distractor affect target categorization speed. We conclude that the message congruency effect is most likely due to convergence on a single category concept in the category-congruent condition.     

The relationship between sentence meaning and word order: Evidence from structural priming in German

Most theories of human language production assume that generating a sentence involves several stages, including an initial stage where the prelinguistic message is determined and a subsequent stage of grammatical encoding. However, it is contentious whether grammatical encoding involves separate stages of grammatical-function assignment and linearization. To address this question, we examined the mapping between the message level and grammatical encoding in two structural priming experiments in which German speakers choose between three different structures expressing ditransitive events. Although speakers showed a tendency to repeat the order of constituents (noun phrase–prepositional phrase, NP–PP, vs. NP–NP), they were additionally primed to repeat the order of thematic roles when constituent structure was constant (NP_RECIPIENT–NP_THEME vs. NP_THEME–NP_RECIPIENT). Experiment 2 found that the latter effect could not be due to persistence of the order of phrases referring to animate and inanimate entities. These results suggest a direct mapping of thematic roles to word order, consistent with a model in which the message is mapped onto syntactic structure in a single stage.     

Imageability,age of acquisition,and frequency factors in acronym comprehension

In spite of their unusual orthographic and phonological form, acronyms (e.g., BBC, HIV, NATO) can become familiar to the reader, and their meaning can be accessed well enough that they are understood. The factors in semantic access for acronym stimuli were assessed using a word association task. Two analyses examined the time taken to generate a word association response to acronym cues. Responses were recorded more quickly to cues that elicited a large proportion of semantic responses, and those that were high in associative strength. Participants were shown to be faster to respond to cues which were imageable or early acquired. Frequency was not a significant predictor of word association responses. Implications for theories of lexical organisation are discussed.     

The locus of word frequency effects in skilled spelling-to-dictation

In spelling-to-dictation tasks, skilled spellers consistently initiate spelling of high-frequency words faster than that of low-frequency words. Tainturier and Rapp's model of spelling shows three possible loci for this frequency effect: spoken word recognition, orthographic retrieval, and response execution of the first letter. Thus far, researchers have attributed the effect solely to orthographic retrieval without considering spoken word recognition or response execution. To investigate word frequency effects at each of these three loci, Experiment 1 involved a delayed spelling-to-dictation task and Experiment 2 involved a delayed/uncertain task. In Experiment 1, no frequency effect was found in the 1200-ms delayed condition, suggesting that response execution is not affected by word frequency. In Experiment 2, no frequency effect was found in the delayed/uncertain task that reflects the orthographic retrieval, whereas a frequency effect was found in the comparison immediate/uncertain task that reflects both spoken word recognition and orthographic retrieval. The results of this two-part study suggest that frequency effects in spoken word recognition play a substantial role in skilled spelling-to-dictation. Discrepancies between these findings and previous research, and the limitations of the present study, are discussed.     

Priming word order by thematic roles: No evidence for an additional involvement of phrase structure

Three experiments are reported that studied the priming of word order in German. Experiment 1 demonstrated priming of the order of case-marked verb arguments. However, order of noun phrases and order of thematic roles were confounded. In Experiment 2, we therefore aimed at disentangling the impact of these two possible factors. By using primes that differed from targets in phrase structure but were parallel with regard to the order of thematic roles, we nevertheless found priming demonstrating the critical impact of thematic roles. Experiment 3 replicated the priming effects from Experiments 1 and 2 within participants and revealed no evidence for a modulation of priming by phrase structure. Consequently, our findings suggest that word order priming crucially depends on the structural outline of thematic roles rather than on the linearization of phrases.     

No strong evidence for lateralisation of word reading and face recognition deficits following posterior brain injury

Face recognition and word reading are thought to be mediated by relatively independent cognitive systems lateralised to the right and left hemispheres, respectively. In this case, we should expect a higher incidence of face recognition problems in patients with right hemisphere injury and a higher incidence of reading problems in patients with left hemisphere injury. We tested this hypothesis in a group of 31 patients with unilateral right or left hemisphere infarcts in the territory of the posterior cerebral arteries. In most domains tested (e.g., visual attention, object recognition, visuo-construction, motion perception), we found that both patient groups performed significantly worse than a matched control group. In particular, we found a significant number of face recognition deficits in patients with left hemisphere injury and a significant number of patients with word reading deficits following right hemisphere injury. This suggests that face recognition and word reading may be mediated by more bilaterally distributed neural systems than is commonly assumed.     

Task-dependent sensitisation of perceptual and semantic processing during visual search for words

Two experiments examined the impact of task-set on people's use of the visual and semantic features of words during visual search. Participants' eye movements were recorded while the distractor words were manipulated. In both experiments, the target word was either given literally (literal task) or defined by a semantic clue (categorical task). According to Kiefer and Martens, participants should preferentially use either the visual or semantic features of words depending on their relevance for the task. This assumption was partially supported. As expected, orthographic neighbours of the target word attracted participants' attention more and took longer to reject, once fixated, during the literal task. Conversely, semantic associates of the target word took longer to reject during the categorical task. However, they did not attract participants' attention more than in the literal task. This unexpected finding is discussed in relation to the processing of words in the peripheral visual field.     

声旁类型与频率在汉字和部件识别中的交互作用

用识别整字和识别部件两种任务探讨两种声旁频率——组字频率和使用频率的作用。结果发现：在局部识别中声旁使用频率的影响和部件类型有交互作用。声旁使用频率对识别汉字单部件声旁有易化作用。声旁组字频率的影响和部件类型有交互作用。声旁组字频率对识别汉字多部件组合声旁有易化作用。在整字识别中,声旁的使用频率有易化作用;声旁的组字频率的作用受到部件类型的影响,多部件组合声旁的组字频率对识别整字有易化作用。