Search results for "Lexical access"
showing 10 items of 22 documents
Processing limitations in L2 fluency: Analysis of inaccuracies in lexical access
2017
Oral fluency is widely included in second language assessments, but its relationship to language proficiency is not straightforward. In the current study, data gathered in an experimental setting were examined with an exploratory fluency analysis. The aim was to examine the relationship between fluency of lexical access and proficiency in foreign language (L2). Fluency of the lexical access was studied by analysing inaccuracies in one word recognition and one word retrieval task. To see if proficiency had an effect on the number and the type of inaccuracies, lexical access tasks were carried out for 563 Finnish school children from grades 4, 8, and 11 in their L2 (English). Proficiency in L…
On the nature of consonant/vowel differences in letter position coding: Evidence from developing and adult readers
2016
In skilled adult readers, transposed-letter effects (jugde-JUDGE) are greater for consonant than for vowel transpositions. These differences are often attributed to phonological rather than orthographic processing. To examine this issue, we employed a scenario in which phonological involvement varies as a function of reading experience: a masked priming lexical decision task with 50-ms primes in adult and developing readers. Indeed, masked phonological priming at this prime duration has been consistently reported in adults, but not in developing readers (Davis, Castles, & Iakovidis, 1998). Thus, if consonant/vowel asymmetries in letter position coding with adults are due to phonological inf…
Do serifs provide an advantage in the recognition of written words?
2011
A neglected issue in the literature on visual-word recognition is the careful examination of parameters such as font, size, or interletter/interword spacing on reading times. Here we analysed whether serifs (i.e., the small features at the end of strokes) play a role in lexical access. Traditionally, serif fonts have been considered easier to read than sans serif fonts, but prior empirical evidence is scarce and inconclusive. Here we conducted a lexical decision experiment (i.e., a word/nonword discrimination task) in which we compared words from the same family (Lucida) either with a serif font or with a sans serif font—in both a block list and a mixed list. Results showed a small, but sig…
On the role of the upper part of words in lexical access: evidence with masked priming.
2012
More than 100 years ago, Huey (1908) indicated that the upper part of words was more relevant for perception than the lower part. Here we examined whether mutilated words, in their upper/lower portions (e.g., , , , ), can automatically access their word units in the mental lexicon. To that end, we conducted four masked repetition priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Results showed that mutilated primes produced a sizeable masked repetition priming effect. Furthermore, the magnitude of the masked repetition priming effect was greater when the upper part of the primes was preserved than when the lower portion was preserved –this was the case not only when the mutilated words we…
Do Diacritical Marks Play a Role at the Early Stages of Word Recognition in Arabic?
2016
Published: 22 August 2016 A crucial question in the domain of visual word recognition is whether letter similarity plays a role in the early stages of visual word processing. Here we focused on Arabic because in this language there are various groups of letters that share the same basic shape and only differ in the number/location of diacritical points. We conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment in which a target word was preceded by: (i) an identity prime; (ii) a prime in which the critical letter was replaced by a letter with the same shape that differed in the number of diacritics (e.g., ); or (iii) a prime in which the critical letter was replaced by a letter with differe…
The Selective Impairment of Phonological Processing in Speech Production
2000
We report the naming performance of a patient (DM) with a fluent progressive aphasia who made phonological errors in all language production tasks. The pattern of errors in naming was strikingly clear: DM made very many phonological errors that resulted almost always in nonword responses. The complete absence of semantic errors and the very low ratio of formal errors relative to nonword errors (1.6:30.3) in DM's performance are discussed in the context of recent claims about the nature of naming deficits in fluent aphasics. We argue that DM's performance makes highly improbable the claim that fluent aphasia results from global lesions affecting all levels of the lexical access system equall…
Letter-case information and the identification of brand names.
2014
A central tenet of most current models of visual-word recognition is that lexical units are activated on the basis of case-invariant abstract letter representations. Here, we examined this assumption by using a unique type of words: brand names. The rationale of the experiments is that brand names are archetypically printed either in lowercase (e.g., adidas) or uppercase (e.g., IKEA). This allows us to present the brand names in their standard or non-standard case configuration (e.g., adidas, IKEA vs. ADIDAS, ikea, respectively). We conducted two experiments with a brand-decision task (‘is it a brand name?’): a single-presentation experiment and a masked priming experiment. Results in the s…
Semantic processing in children with autism spectrum disorder
2021
El presente estudio analizó el procesamiento semántico de un grupo de niños con trastorno del espectro autista (n= 24), con el objetivo principal de averiguar si presentan diferencias en comparación con un grupo de niños con desarrollo típico (n = 24). Para ello, se realizó un análisis del contenido de los ítems del subtest de información del WPPSY-III, estableciendo una serie de categorías en función del tipo de demanda semántica requerida: asociación significante-significado, relación experiencial y conocimiento general. Los resultados obtenidos apoyan la idea de que los niños con autismo realizarían un procesamiento semántico de la información de la misma manera que los niños sin autismo…
Prefix Stripping Re-Re-Revisited: MEG Investigations of Morphological Decomposition and Recomposition
2019
We revisit a long-standing question in the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic literature on comprehending morphologically complex words: are prefixes and suffixes processed using the same cognitive mechanisms? Recent work using Magnetoencephalography (MEG) to uncover the dynamic temporal and spatial responses evoked by visually presented complex suffixed single words provide us with a comprehensive picture of morphological processing in the brain, from early, form-based decomposition, through lexical access, grammatically constrained recomposition, and semantic interpretation. In the present study, we find that MEG responses to prefixed words reveal interesting early differences in the la…
How are words with diacritical vowels represented in the mental lexicon? Evidence from Spanish and German
2021
Recent research has shown that the omission of diacritics in words does not affect the initial contact with the lexical entries, as measured by masked priming. In the present study, we directly examined whether diacritics’ omission slows down lexical access using a single-presentation semantic categorisation task (“is the word an animal name?”). We did so in a language in which diacritics reflect lexical stress but not vowel quality (Spanish; e.g. ratón [mouse] vs. raton; Experiment 1) and in a language in which diacritics reflect vowel quality but not lexical stress (German; e.g. Kröte vs. Krote; Experiment 2). In Spanish, word response times were similar for words with diacritics that wer…