0000000000802450
AUTHOR
Pablo Gomez
Non-valvular Atrial Fibrillation in CKD: Role of Vitamin K Antagonists and Direct Oral Anticoagulants. A Narrative Review
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia in chronic kidney disease (CKD), with a close bidirectional relationship between the two entities. The presence of CKD in AF increases the risk of thromboembolic events, mortality and bleeding. Vitamin K antagonists (VKA) have been the mainstay of treatment for the prevention of thromboembolic events in AF until recently, with confirmed benefits in AF patients with stage 3 CKD. However, the risk-benefit profile of VKA in patients with AF and stages 4–5 CKD is controversial due to the lack of evidence from randomized controlled trials. Treatment with VKA in CKD patients has been associated with conditions such as poorer anticoagulation q…
Do Grading Gray Stimuli Help to Encode Letter Position?
Numerous experiments in the past decades recurrently showed that a transposed-letter pseudoword (e.g., JUGDE) is much more wordlike than a replacement-letter control (e.g., JUPTE). Critically, there is an ongoing debate as to whether this effect arises at a perceptual level (e.g., perceptual uncertainty at assigning letter position of an array of visual objects) or at an abstract language-specific level (e.g., via a level of “open bigrams” between the letter and word levels). Here, we designed an experiment to test the limits of perceptual accounts of letter position coding. The stimuli in a lexical decision task were presented either with a homogeneous letter intensity or with a graded gra…
In Defense of Position Uncertainty
The authors comments on the article "Orthographic coding in illiterates," by J. A. Dunabeitia, et al. There is a high degree of flexibility in letter-position coding during visual word recognition and reading. This phenomenon is explained based on the presence of perceptual noise in the information used for locating the positions of objects, namely, letters, across space.
Unveiling the boost in the sandwich priming technique.
The masked priming technique (which compares #####-house-HOUSE vs. #####-fight-HOUSE) is the gold-standard tool to examine the initial moments of word processing. Lupker and Davis showed that adding a pre-prime identical to the target produced greater priming effects in the sandwich technique (which compares #####-HOUSE-house-HOUSE vs #####-HOUSE-fight-HOUSE). While there is consensus that the sandwich technique magnifies the size of priming effects relative to the standard procedure, the mechanisms underlying this boost are not well understood (i.e., does it reflect quantitative or qualitative changes?). To fully characterise the sandwich technique, we compared the sandwich and standard t…
The effects of interletter spacing in visual-word recognition.
Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in casino, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., casino vs. casino…
Letter Position Coding Across Modalities: The Case of Braille Readers
BackgroundThe question of how the brain encodes letter position in written words has attracted increasing attention in recent years. A number of models have recently been proposed to accommodate the fact that transposed-letter stimuli like jugde or caniso are perceptually very close to their base words.MethodologyHere we examined how letter position coding is attained in the tactile modality via Braille reading. The idea is that Braille word recognition may provide more serial processing than the visual modality, and this may produce differences in the input coding schemes employed to encode letters in written words. To that end, we conducted a lexical decision experiment with adult Braille…
Decomposing encoding and decisional components in visual-word recognition: a diffusion model analysis.
In a diffusion model, performance as measured by latency and accuracy in two-choice tasks is decomposed into different parameters that can be linked to underlying cognitive processes. Although the diffusion model has been utilized to account for lexical decision data, the effects of stimulus manipulations in previous experiments originated from just one parameter: the quality of the evidence. Here we examined whether the diffusion model can be used to effectively decompose the underlying processes during visual-word recognition. We explore this issue in an experiment that features a lexical manipulation (word frequency) that we expected to affect mostly the quality of the evidence (the dri…
ERP correlates of letter identity and letter position are modulated by lexical frequency
The encoding of letter position is a key aspect in all recently proposed models of visual-word recognition. We analyzed the impact of lexical frequency on letter position assignment by examining the temporal dynamics of lexical activation induced by pseudowords extracted from words of different frequencies. For each word (e.g., BRIDGE), we created two pseudowords: A transposed-letter (TL: BRIGDE) and a replaced-letter pseudoword (RL: BRITGE). ERPs were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in two tasks: Semantic categorization (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2). For high-frequency stimuli, similar ERPs were obtained for words and TL-pseudowords, but the N400…
Resolving the locus of cAsE aLtErNaTiOn effects in visual word recognition: Evidence from masked priming.
Determining the factors that modulate the early access of abstract lexical representations is imperative for the formulation of a comprehensive neural account of visual-word identification. There is a current debate on whether the effects of case alternation (e.g., tRaIn vs. train) have an early or late locus in the word-processing stream. Here we report a lexical decision experiment using a technique that taps the early stages of visual-word recognition (i.e., masked priming). In the design, uppercase targets could be preceded by an identity/unrelated prime that could be in lowercase or alternating case (e.g., table-TABLE vs. crash-TABLE; tAbLe-TABLE vs. cRaSh-TABLE). Results revealed that…
Do young readers have fast access to abstract lexical representations? Evidence from masked priming
Although there is consensus that adult readers have fast access to abstract letter/word representations, the developmental trajectory of such access has not been mapped out yet. To examine whether developmental readers have rapid access to abstract representations during the early stages of word processing, we conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment with two groups of young readers (third and fifth graders) and a group of young adults. We selected two types of words: (a) words composed of cross-case letters that are visually dissimilar (DIS words; e.g., arte/ARTE [Spanish for art]) and (b) words composed of cross-case letters that are visually similar (SIM words; e.g., vivo/V…
Supplementary_Material_ – Supplemental material for On the limits of familiarity accounts in lexical decision: The case of repetition effects
Supplemental material, Supplementary_Material_ for On the limits of familiarity accounts in lexical decision: The case of repetition effects by Manuel Perea, Ana Marcet, Marta Vergara-Martínez and Pablo Gomez in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Subtle Increases in Interletter Spacing Facilitate the Encoding of Words during Normal Reading
BackgroundSeveral recent studies have revealed that words presented with a small increase in interletter spacing are identified faster than words presented with the default interletter spacing (i.e., w a t e r faster than water). Modeling work has shown that this advantage occurs at an early encoding level. Given the implications of this finding for the ease of reading in the new digital era, here we examined whether the beneficial effect of small increases in interletter spacing can be generalized to a normal reading situation.MethodologyWe conducted an experiment in which the participant's eyes were monitored when reading sentences varying in interletter spacing: i) sentences were present…
Are better young readers more likely to confuse their mother with their mohter?
One of the most replicated effects in the contemporary word recognition literature is the transposed-letter effect (TL effect): pseudowords created by the transposition of two letters (e.g., MOHTER) are often misread as the real word. This effect ruled out those accounts that assume that letter position is encoded accurately and led to more flexible coding schemes. Here, we examined whether reading skill modulates this effect. The relationship between reading skill and the TL effect magnitude is a contentious issue both empirically and theoretically. The present lexical decision experiment was designed to shed some light on the relationship between reading skill and the TL effect magnitude…
Does Extra Interletter Spacing Help Text Reading in Skilled Adult Readers?
AbstractA number of experiments have shown that, in skilled adult readers, a small increase in interletter spacing speeds up the process of visual word recognition relative to the default settings (i.e., judge faster than judge). The goal of the present experiment was to examine whether this effect can be generalized to a more ecological scenario: text reading. Each participant read two stories (367 words each) taken from a standardized reading test. The stories were presented with the standard interletter spacing or with a small increase in interletter spacing (+1.2 points to default) in a within-subject design. An eyetracker was used to register the participants’ eye movements. Comprehens…
A challenging dissociation in masked identity priming with the lexical decision task.
Abstract The masked priming technique has been used extensively to explore the early stages of visual-word recognition. One key phenomenon in masked priming lexical decision is that identity priming is robust for words, whereas it is small/unreliable for nonwords. This dissociation has usually been explained on the basis that masked priming effects are lexical in nature, and hence there should not be an identity prime facilitation for nonwords. We present two experiments whose results are at odds with the assumption made by models that postulate that identity priming is purely lexical, and also challenge the assumption that word and nonword responses are based on the same information. Our e…
Can letter position encoding be modified by visual perceptual elements?
A plethora of studies has revealed that letter position coding is relatively flexible during word recognition (e.g., the transposed-letter [TL] pseudoword CHOLOCATE is frequently misread as CHOCOLATE). A plausible explanation of this phenomenon is that letter identity and location are not perfectly bound as a consequence of the limitations of the visual system. Thus, a complete characterization of letter position coding requires an examination of how letter position coding can be modulated by visual perceptual elements. Here we conducted three lexical decision experiments with TL and replacement-letter pseudowords that manipulated the visual characteristics of the stimuli. In Experiment 1,…
sj-docx-1-qjp-10.1177_17470218211012960 – Supplemental material for Are better young readers more likely to confuse their mother with their mohter?
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-qjp-10.1177_17470218211012960 for Are better young readers more likely to confuse their mother with their mohter? by Pablo Gomez, Ana Marcet and Manuel Perea in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Are go/no-go tasks preferable to two-choice tasks in response time experiments with older adults?
Epub ahead of print 02/11/2015 Recent research has shown that, in response time (RT) tasks, the go/no-go response procedure produces faster (and less noisy) RTs and fewer errors than the two-choice response procedure in children, although these differences are substantially smaller in college-aged adults. Here we examined whether the go/no-go procedure can be preferred to the two-choice procedure in RT experiments with older adults (i.e. another population with slower and more error-prone responding than college-aged individuals). To that end, we compared these response procedures in two experiments with older adults (Mage = 83 years): a visual word recognition task (lexical decision) and a…
Psicothema
Resumen tomado de la publicación ¿Cómo codifican los jugadores de Scrabble la posición de las letras durante la lectura? Antecedentes: en experimentos con lectores adultos, las pseudopalabras creadas por transposición de letras (v.g., CHOLOCATE) se confunden frecuentemente con su palabra base. Por ejemplo, en tareas de decisión léxica (“¿es el estímulo una palabra?”), los tiempos de respuesta son mayores y con mayor porcentaje de errores para CHOLOCATE que para su control ortográfico CHOTONATE (es decir, un efecto de transposición de letras). Método: en el presente experimento examinamos los procesos de codificación de la posición de las letras en individuos particularmente expertos en el p…
Masked identity priming reflects an encoding advantage in developing readers.
Abstract The masked priming technique is widely used to explore the early moments of letter and word identification. Although this technique is increasingly used in experiments with young readers, the mechanism in play during masked priming with early readers has not yet been fully explored. We investigated the masked priming effects from a modeling perspective; we instantiated competing theories as data models (using Bayes factors) and as a computational model (diffusion model). We carried out a masked priming experiment using identity primes with second- and fourth-grade participants, and we analyzed the data through an evidence accumulation model lens. The priming effect manifests as a s…
The effects of inter-letter spacing in visual-word recognition: Evidence with young normal readers and developmental dyslexics
Abstract Recent research has demonstrated that slight increases of inter-letter spacing have a positive impact on skilled readers' recognition of visually presented words. In the present study, we examined whether this effect generalises to young normal readers and readers with developmental dyslexia, and whether increased inter-letter spacing affects the reading times and comprehension of a short text. To that end, we conducted a series of lexical decision and continuous reading experiments in which words were presented with the default settings or with a small increase in inter-letter spacing. Increased spacing produced shorter word identification times not only with adult skilled readers…
On the limits of familiarity accounts in lexical decision: The case of repetition effects
Recent modelling accounts of the lexical decision task have suggested that the reading system performs evidence accumulation to carry out some functions. Evidence accumulation models have been very successful in accounting for effects in the lexical decision task, including the dissociation of repetition effects for words and nonwords (facilitative for words but inhibitory for nonwords). The familiarity of a repeated item triggers its recognition, which facilitates ‘word’ responses but hampers nonword rejection. However, reports of facilitative repetition effects for nonwords with several repetitions in short blocks challenge this hypothesis and favour models based on episodic retrieval. T…