Does "whole-word shape" play a role in visual word recognition?

To analyze the impact of outline shape on visual word recognition, the visual pattern of the stimuli can be distorted by size alternation. Contrary to the predictions of models that rely on outline shape (Allen, Wallace, & Weber, 1995), the effect of size alternationwas greater for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words in a lexical decision task (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, the effect of case type (lowercase vs. UPPERCASE) occurred for low-frequency words, but not for high-frequency words. The effect of neighborhood size was remarkably similar in the two experiments. The results can be readily explained in the framework of a resonance model (Grossberg & Stone, 1986), in whic…

The effects of associative and semantic priming in the lexical decision task.

Four lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine under which conditions automatic semantic priming effects can be obtained. Experiments 1 and 2 analyzed associative/semantic effects at several very short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs), whereas Experiments 3 and 4 used a single-presentation paradigm at two response-stimulus intervals (RSIs). Experiment 1 tested associatively related pairs from three semantic categories (synonyms, antonyms, and category coordinates). The results showed reliable associative priming effects at all SOAs. In addition, the correlation between associative strength and magnitude of priming was significant only at the shortest SOA (66 ms). When prime-t…

The frequency effect for pseudowords in the lexical decision task

Four experiments were designed to investigate whether the frequency of words used to create pseudowords plays an important role in lexical decision. Computational models of the lexical decision task (e.g., the dual route cascaded model and the multiple read-out model) predict that latencies to low-frequency pseudowords should be faster than latencies to high-frequency pseudowords. Consistent with this prediction, results showed that when the pseudowords were created by replacing one internal letter of the base word (Experiments 1 and 3), high-frequency pseudowords yielded slower latencies than low-frequency pseudowords. However, this effect occurred only in the leading edge of the response …

READ-COGvid: A Database From Reading and Media Habits During COVID-19 Confinement in Spain and Italy

La “diversidad contextual” de las palabras como facilitador de la lectura

Eva M. Rosa, Marta Vergara-Martínez, Manuel Perea (miembros de la ERI-Lectura de la Universitat de València) y Jose L. Tapia (profesor de la Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Mártir) presentan los resultados de su investigación sobre la “diversidad contextual” de las palabras como facilitador de la lectura en las Jornades Lectura Fàcil de la Generalitat Valenciana organizadas por la ERI-Lectura de la Universitat de València el 18-19 mayo de 2018. http://ir.uv.es/4zhj7IR

Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task?

In the go/no-go lexical decision task (LDT), participants are instructed to respond as quickly as they can when a word is presented and not to respond if a nonword is presented. By minimizing part of the response selection process in the experimental task, the impact of response decision time on the obtained lexical decision time is probably reduced relative to the standard yes/no LDT (Gordon, 1983). Experiments 1 and 2 show that the go/no-go LDT is sensitive to the effects of word frequency and associative priming--the magnitude of these effects is similar with the two tasks. More important, the go/no-go LDT has a number of advantages with respect to the "standard" yes/no LDT: It offers fa…

Beneficios de los entornos lúdicos para el aprendizaje de lenguas

Durante las últimas décadas hemos asistido a un cambio en las metodologías de aprendizaje debido a la creciente incorporación de elementos lúdicos. En el caso concreto del aprendizaje de lenguas, existen varios videojuegos y entornos basados en la gamificación para el aprendizaje colaborativo. Estudios recientes muestran los beneficios del aprendizaje lúdico de lenguas en términos de vocabulario, gramática, escritura, pronunciación, expresión oral y comprensión auditiva, así como en términos de motivación, compromiso y satisfacción de los estudiantes.

Contextual diversity favors the learning of new words in children regardless of their comprehension skills

Available online 6 November 2021 Recent research has shown the benefits of high contextual diversity, defined as the number of different contexts in which a word appears, when incidentally learning new words. These benefits have been found both in laboratory settings and in ecological settings such as the classroom during regular hours. To examine the nature of this effect in young readers aged 11–13 years, we analyzed whether these benefits are modulated by the individuals’ reading comprehension scores; that is, would better comprehenders benefit the most from contextual diversity? The manipulation of contextual diversity was done by inserting the novel words into three different contexts/…

The role of letter features in visual-word recognition: Evidence from a delayed segment technique.

Available online 9 June 2016 Do all visual features in aword's constituent letters have the same importance during lexical access? Herewe examined whether some components of a word's letters (midsegments, junctions, terminals) are more important than others. To that end,we conducted two lexical decision experiments using a delayed segment techniquewith lowercase stimuli. In this technique a partial previewappears for 50ms and is immediately followed by the target item. In Experiment 1, the partial preview was composed of terminals+junctions,midsegments+junctions, or midsegments + terminals — a whole preview condition was used as a control. Results only revealed an advantage of the whole pre…

Does the proportion of associatively related pairs modulate the associative priming effect at very brief stimulus-onset asynchronies?

A number of experiments have shown that the magnitude of the associative priming effect increases substantially when there is a high proportion of associatively related pairs in the list when the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between prime and target is long (more than 400 ms). In the present series of experiments we manipulated the proportion of associatively related pairs when the SOA was very brief (less than 200 ms). If processing of a target word is facilitated automatically by the prior presentation of a related prime, the occurrence of priming should be unaffected by the proportion of related pairs in the list. Experiment 1 showed a robust relatedness proportion effect obtained in …

Cómo conseguir mejorar el aprendizaje de palabras

Muchas de las palabras que conocemos no han sido adquiridas mediante un esfuerzo explícito, sino de manera incidental. Pero se sabe relativamente poco sobre los factores que modulan el aprendizaje implícito de vocabulario. Varios experimentos recientes han mostrado que las palabras nuevas se adquieren mejor cuando se aprenden en diferentes contextos que en un mismo contexto. Estos hallazgos apoyan la idea de organizar un currículo educativo transversal que mejore la adquisición de vocabulario tanto en la lengua materna (v.g., a través de diferentes asignaturas) como en otras lenguas.

Contextual diversity facilitates learning new words in the classroom.

Published: June 6, 2017 In the field of word recognition and reading, it is commonly assumed that frequently repeated words create more accessible memory traces than infrequently repeated words, thus capturing the word-frequency effect. Nevertheless, recent research has shown that a seemingly related factor, contextual diversity (defined as the number of different contexts [e.g., films] in which a word appears), is a better predictor than word-frequency in word recognition and sentence reading experiments. Recent research has shown that contextual diversity plays an important role when learning new words in a laboratory setting with adult readers. In the current experiment, we directly mani…

Where is the locus of the lowercase advantage during sentence reading?

While most models of visual word identification and reading posit that a word's visual codes are rapidly transformed onto case-invariant representations (i.e., table and TABLE would equally activate the word unit corresponding to "table"), a number of experiments have shown a lowercase advantage in various word identification and reading tasks. In the present experiment, we examined the locus of this lowercase advantage by comparing the pattern of eye movements when reading sentences in lowercase vs. uppercase. Each sentence contained a target word that was high or low in word-frequency. Overall, results showed faster reading times for lowercase than for uppercase sentences. More important,…

Repetition and form priming interact with neighborhood density at a brief stimulus onset asynchrony.

The relationships between repetition- and form-priming effects and neighborhood density were analyzed in two masked priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Given that form-priming effects appear to be influenced by a word's orthographic neighborhood, it is theoretically important to find out whether repetition priming also differs as a function of the word's orthographic neighborhood. Within an activation framework, repetition- and form-priming effects are just quantitatively different phenomena, whereas the two effects are qualitatively different in a serial-ordered model of lexical access (the entry-opening model). The results show that repetition- and form-priming effects wer…