0000000000089805

AUTHOR

Marta Vergara

The time course of orthography and phonology: ERP correlates of masked priming effects in Spanish

Abstract One key issue for computational models of visual-word recognition is the time course of orthographic and phonological information during reading. Previous research, using both behavioral and event related brain potential (ERP) measures, has shown that orthographic codes are activated very early but that phonological activation starts to occur immediately afterward. Here we report an ERP masked priming experiment in Spanish that investigates this issue further by using very strict control conditions. The critical phonological comparison was between two pairs of primes having the same orthographic similarity to the target words but differing in phonological similarity (e.g., conal-CA…

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Are Vowels and Consonants Processed Differently? Event-related Potential Evidence with a Delayed Letter Paradigm

Abstract To investigate the neural bases of consonant and vowel processing, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in a lexical decision task. The stimuli were displayed in three different conditions: (i) simultaneous presentation of all letters (baseline condition); (ii) presentation of all letters, except that two internal consonants were delayed for 50 msec (consonants-delayed condition); and (iii) presentation of all letters, except that two internal vowels were delayed for 50 msec (vowels-delayed condition). The behavioral results showed that, for words, response times in the consonants-delayed condition were longer than in the vowel…

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ERP correlates of transposed-letter priming effects: The role of vowels versus consonants

One key issue for any computational model of visual-word recognition is the choice of an input coding scheme for assigning letter position. Recent research has shown that pseudowords created by transposing two letters are very effective at activating the lexical representation of their base words (e.g., relovution activates REVOLUTION). We report a masked priming lexical decision experiment in which the pseudoword primes were created by transposing/replacing two consonants or two vowels while event-related potentials were recorded. The results showed a modulation of the amplitude at an early window (150-250 ms) and at the N400 component for vowels but not for consonant transpositions. In ad…

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ERP correlates of transposed-letter similarity effects: Are consonants processed differently from vowels?

Recent research has shown that pseudowords created by transposing letters are very effective for activating the lexical representation of their base words (e.g., relovution activates REVOLUTION). Furthermore, pseudoword transpositions of consonants are more similar to their corresponding base words than the transposition of vowels. We report one experiment using pseudowords created by the transposition of two consonants, two vowels, and their corresponding control conditions (i.e., the replacement of two consonants or two vowels) in a lexical decision task while Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The results showed a modulation of the amplitude of the N400 component as a functio…

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