A Picture Is Worth… Both Spelling and Sound.

Donna Coch

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01490

Abstract

In an event-related potential (ERP) study using picture stimuli, we explored whether spelling information is co-activated with sound information even when neither type of information is explicitly provided. Pairs of picture stimuli presented in a rhyming paradigm were varied by both phonology (the two images in a pair had either rhyming, e.g., boat and goat, or non-rhyming, e.g., boat and cane, labels) and orthography (rhyming image pairs had labels that were either spelled the same, e.g., boat and goat, or not spelled the same, e.g., brain and cane). Electrophysiological picture rhyming (sound) effects were evident in terms of both N400/N450 and late effect amplitude: Non-rhyming images elicited more negative waves than rhyming images. Remarkably, the magnitude of the late ERP rhyming effect was modulated by spelling – even though words were neither explicitly seen nor heard during the task. Moreover, both the N400/N450 and late rhyming effects in the spelled-the-same (orthographically matched) condition were larger in the group with higher scores (by median split) on a standardized measure of sound awareness. Overall, the findings show concomitant meaning (semantic), sound (phonological), and spelling (orthographic) activation for picture processing in a rhyming paradigm, especially in young adults with better reading skills. Not outwardly lexical but nonetheless modulated by reading skill, electrophysiological picture rhyming effects may be useful for exploring co-activation in children with dyslexia.

Highlights

The Lexical Quality Hypothesis (e.g., Perfetti and Hart, 2002; Perfetti, 2007) posits that the highquality word representations that underlie fluent reading are characterized by well-integrated, automatically retrieved orthographic, phonological, and semantic information
We found a typical event-related potential (ERP) rhyming effect on N400/N450 amplitude such that non-rhyming targets elicited a more negative N400/N450 than rhyming targets, over right hemisphere, frontocentral, medial sites
If orthographic information is co-activated with meaning and phonological information within the lexicosemantic system, ERP rhyming effects in a picture rhyming paradigm should be modulated by the orthographic congruence of the spellings of the labels for the pictures in each pair

Summary

Introduction

The Lexical Quality Hypothesis (e.g., Perfetti and Hart, 2002; Perfetti, 2007) posits that the highquality word representations that underlie fluent reading are characterized by well-integrated, automatically retrieved orthographic (spelling), phonological (sound), and semantic (meaning) information. Consistent with this, previous psycholinguistic studies have shown that both orthographic and phonological codes are accessed in young adults during both reading (e.g., Tanenhaus et al, 1980; Pexman et al, 2002) and listening (e.g., Seidenberg and Tanenhaus, 1979; Tanenhaus et al, 1980; Ziegler et al, 2004; Chéreau et al, 2007) tasks. Ziegler et al (2004) found orthographic consistency effects on spoken word recognition in lexical decision, rime detection, and auditory naming tasks, with the strongest effects in the first and the weakest in the last. The overall pattern of findings for lexical items in such psycholinguistic studies is consistent with connectivity between spelling and sound information when one or the other is provided, consonant with word processing models instantiating interactive activation of orthography and phonology in reading (e.g., McClelland and Rumelhart, 1981) ERP Picture Rhyming “mandatory orthographic activation during spoken word recognition.” the overall pattern of findings for lexical items in such psycholinguistic studies is consistent with connectivity between spelling and sound information when one or the other is provided, consonant with word processing models instantiating interactive activation of orthography and phonology in reading (e.g., McClelland and Rumelhart, 1981)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion