Search results for "visual word recognition"
showing 10 items of 37 documents
Are You Taking the Fastest Route to the RESTAURANT?
2018
Abstract. Most words in books and digital media are written in lowercase. The primacy of this format has been brought out by different experiments showing that common words are identified faster in lowercase (e.g., molecule) than in uppercase (MOLECULE). However, there are common words that are usually written in uppercase (street signs, billboards; e.g., STOP, PHARMACY). We conducted a lexical decision experiment to examine whether the usual letter-case configuration (uppercase vs. lowercase) of common words modulates word identification times. To this aim, we selected 78 molecule-type words and 78 PHARMACY-type words that were presented in lowercase or uppercase. For molecule-type words,…
Psycholinguistic variables in visual word recognition and pronunciation of European Portuguese words: a mega-study approach
2019
An increasing number of psycholinguistic studies have adopted a megastudy approach to explore the role that different variables play in the speed and/or accuracy with which words are recognised and/or pronounced in different languages. However, despite evidence for deep and shallow orthographies, little is known about the role that several orthographic, phonological and semantic variables play in visual word recognition and word production of words from intermediate-depth languages, as European Portuguese (EP). The current study aimed to overcome this gap, by collecting lexical decision and naming data for a large pool of words selected to closely represent the diversity of the EP language.…
Does Top-Down Feedback Modulate the Encoding of Orthographic Representations During Visual-Word Recognition?
2016
Abstract. In masked priming lexical decision experiments, there is a matched-case identity advantage for nonwords, but not for words (e.g., ERTAR-ERTAR < ertar-ERTAR; ALTAR-ALTAR = altar-ALTAR). This dissociation has been interpreted in terms of feedback from higher levels of processing during orthographic encoding. Here, we examined whether a matched-case identity advantage also occurs for words when top-down feedback is minimized. We employed a task that taps prelexical orthographic processes: the masked prime same-different task. For “same” trials, results showed faster response times for targets when preceded by a briefly presented matched-case identity prime than when preceded by …
Children Like Dense Neighborhoods: Orthographic Neighborhood Density Effects in Novel Readers
2008
Previous evidence with English beginning readers suggests that some orthographic effects, such as the orthographic neighborhood density effects, could be stronger for children than for adults. Particularly, children respond more accurately to words with many orthographic neighbors than to words with few neighbors. The magnitude of the effects for children is much higher than for adults, and some researchers have proposed that these effects could be progressively modulated according to reading expertise. The present paper explores in depth how children from 1stto 6thgrade perform a lexical decision with words that are from dense or sparse orthographic neighborhoods, attending not only to acc…
The impact of visual cues during visual word recognition in deaf readers: An ERP study
2021
Abstract Although evidence is still scarce, recent research suggests key differences in how deaf and hearing readers use visual information during visual word recognition. Here we compared the time course of lexical access in deaf and hearing readers of similar reading ability. We also investigated whether one visual property of words, the outline-shape, modulates visual word recognition differently in both groups. We recorded the EEG signal of twenty deaf and twenty hearing readers while they performed a lexical decision task. In addition to the effect of lexicality, we assessed the impact of outline-shape by contrasting responses to pseudowords with an outline-shape that was consistent (e…
The role of letter features in visual-word recognition: Evidence from a delayed segment technique.
2016
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…
Responsivity to dyslexia training indexed by the N170 amplitude of the brain potential elicited by word reading.
2016
The present study examined training effects in dyslexic children on reading fluency and the amplitude of N170, a negative brain-potential component elicited by letter and symbol strings. A group of 18 children with dyslexia in 3rd grade (9.05 ± 0.46 years old) was tested before and after following a letter-speech sound mapping training. A group of 20 third-grade typical readers (8.78 ± 0.35 years old) performed a single time on the same brain potential task. The training was differentially effective in speeding up reading fluency in the dyslexic children. In some children, training had a beneficial effect on reading fluency (‘improvers’) while a training effect was absent in others (‘non-im…
Decomposing encoding and decisional components in visual-word recognition: a diffusion model analysis.
2014
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…
Phonological precision for word recognition in skilled readers
2019
According to the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007), differences in the orthographic, semantic, and phonological representations of words will affect individual reading performance. Whilst several studies have focused on orthographic precision and semantic coherence, few have considered phonological precision. The present study used a suite of individual difference measures to assess which components of lexical quality contributed to competition resolution in a masked priming experiment. The experiment measured form priming for word and pseudoword targets with dense and sparse neighbourhoods in 84 university students. Individual difference measures of language and cognitive skills …
Cracking the Code : The Impact of Orthographic Transparency and Morphological-Syllabic Complexity on Reading and Developmental Dyslexia
2019
Reading is an essential skill in modern societies, yet not all learners necessarily become proficient readers. Theoretical concepts (e.g., the orthographic depth hypothesis; the grain size theory) as well as empirical evidence suggest that certain orthographies are easier to learn than others. The present paper reviews the literature on orthographic transparency, morphological complexity, and syllabic complexity of alphabetic languages. These notions are elaborated to show that differences in reading acquisition reflect fundamental differences in the nature of the phonological recoding and reading strategies developing in response to the specific orthography to be learned. The present paper…