What smartphones change about writing: The impact of word suggestions on orthographic processing

This study examined the theoretical controversy on the impact of syllables and bigrams in handwriting production. French children and adults wrote words on a digitizer so that we could collect data on the local, online processing of handwriting production. The words differed in the position of the lowest frequency bigram. In one condition, it coincided with the word's syllable boundary. In the other condition, it was located before the syllable boundary. The results yielded higher movement durations at the position where the low-frequency bigram coincided with the syllable boundary compared to where the low-frequency bigram appeared before the syllable boundary. Syllable-oriented strategies failed with the presence of a very low-frequency bigram within the initial syllable. Further analysis showed that children in grades 3 and 4 privileged syllable-oriented programming strategies. The production times of children in grade 4 were also affected by syllable frequency and, to a lesser extent, bigram frequency. The adults writing durations were modulated by bigram frequency. Therefore, both bigrams and syllables regulate handwriting production although the influence of bigrams was stronger in adults than children. In the light of these results, we propose a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production.

The coordination of the various processes involved in language production is a subject of keen debate in writing research. Some authors hold that writing processes can be flexibly coordinated according to task demands, whereas others claim that process coordination is entirely inflexible. For instance, orthographic planning has been shown to be resource-dependent during handwriting, but inflexible in typing, even under time pressure. The present study therefore went one step further in studying flexibility in the coordination of orthographic processing and graphomotor execution, by measuring the impact of time pressure during a handwritten copy task. Orthographic and graphomotor processes were observed via syllable processing. Writers copied out two- and three-syllable words three times in a row, with and without time pressure. Latencies and letter measures at syllable boundaries were analyzed. We hypothesized that if coordination is flexible and varies according to task demands, it should be modified by time pressure, affecting both latency before execution and duration of execution. We therefore predicted that the extent of syllable processing before execution would be reduced under time pressure and, as a consequence, syllable effects during execution would be more salient. Results showed, however, that time pressure interacted neither with syllable number nor with syllable structure. Accordingly, syllable processing appears to remain the same regardless of time pressure. The flexibility of process coordination during handwriting is discussed, as is the operationalization of time pressure constraints.

A case of conduction aphasia (CM) is presented to further explore the notion that such aphasics possess a phonological output disorder in constructing phonemic strings. Most studies on this topic have been restricted to the oral production of single words. This study sought to increase understanding of this phonological deficit by examining its interference with orthographic production and its manifestation in running speech. The latter was particularly important, because the diagnosis of a phonemic string deficit in conduction aphasia has been based on a model that was developed to explain segmental errors in normal running speech (cf. Shattuck-Hufnagel 1979). Results indicated that the phonemic string deficit in CM does interfere with orthographic processing, and that while both normal adults and CM exhibit disruption in constructing phonemic strings, the manner of breakdown, as characterized by Shattuck-Hufnagel, is different. The between-word errors of normal speakers typically involve the mi...

In this study we investigated the intricate interplay between central linguistic processing and peripheral motor processes during typewriting. Participants had to typewrite two-constituent (noun-noun) Finnish compounds in response to picture presentation while their typing behavior was registered. As dependent measures we used writing onset time to assess what processes were completed before writing and inter-key intervals to assess what processes were going on during writing. It was found that writing onset time was determined by whole word frequency rather than constituent frequencies, indicating that compound words are retrieved as whole orthographic units before writing is initiated. In addition, we found that the length of the first syllable also affects writing onset time, indicating that the first syllable is fully prepared before writing commences. The inter-key interval results showed that linguistic planning is not fully ready before writing, but cascades into the motor execution phase. More specifically, inter-key intervals were largest at syllable and morpheme boundaries, supporting the view that additional linguistic planning takes place at these boundaries. Bigram and trigram frequency also affected inter-key intervals with shorter intervals corresponding to higher frequencies. This can be explained by stronger memory traces for frequently co-occurring letter sequences in the motor memory for typewriting. These frequency effects were even larger in the second than in the first constituent, indicating that low-level motor memory starts to become more important during the course of writing compound words. We discuss our results in the light of current models of morphological processing and written word production.

Action observation and execution share overlapping neural resonating mechanisms. In the present study, we sought to examine the effect of the activation of this system during concurrent movement observation and execution in a prehension task, when no a priori information about the requirements of grasping action was available. Although it is known that simultaneous activation by observation and execution influences motor performance, the importance of the delays of these two events and the specific effect of movement observation itself (and not the prediction of the to-be-observed movement) on action performance are poorly known. Fine-grained kinematic analysis of both the transport and grasp components of the movement should provide knowledge about the influence of movement observation on the precision and the performance of the executed movement. The experiment involved two real participants who were asked to grasp a different side of a single object that was composed of a large and a small part. In the first experiment, we measured how the transport component and the grasp component were affected by movement observation. We tested whether this influence was greater if the observed movement occurred just before the onset of movement (200ms) or well before the onset of movement (1s). In a second experiment, to reproduce the previous experiment and to verify the specificity of the grasping movements, we also included a condition consisting of pointing towards the object. Both experiments showed two main results. A general facilitation of the transport component was found when observing a simultaneous action, independent of its congruency. Moreover, a specific facilitation of the grasp component was present during the observation of a congruent action when movement execution and observation were nearly synchronised. While the general facilitation may arise from a competition between the two participants as they reached for the object, the specific facilitation of the grasp component seems to be directly related to mirror neuron system activity induced by action observation itself. Moreover, the time course of the events appears to be an essential factor for this modulation, implying the transitory activation of the mirror neuron system.

Segmental duration patterns have long been used to support the proposal that syllables are basic speech planning units, but production experiments almost always confound syllable and word boundaries. The current study tried to remedy this problem by comparing word-internal and word-peripheral consonantal duration patterns. Stress and sequencing were used to vary the nominal location of word-internal boundaries in American English productions of disyllabic nonsense words with medial consonant sequences. The word-internal patterns were compared to those that occurred at the edges of words, where boundary location was held constant and only stress and sequence order were varied. The English patterns were then compared to patterns from Russian and Finnish. All three languages showed similar effects of stress and sequencing on consonantal duration, but an independent effect of syllable position was observed only in English and only at a word boundary. English also showed stronger effects of stress and sequencing across a word boundary than within a word. Finnish showed the opposite pattern, whereas Russian showed little difference between word-internal and word-peripheral patterns. Overall, the results suggest that the suprasegmental units of motor planning are language-specific and that the word may be more a relevant planning unit in English.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder that causes general cognitive and developmental delays. Compared to persons with Down syndrome (DS) at the same developmental level, individuals with WS generally exhibit superior expressive language abilities, but have difficulty with tasks that require the visual control of movement. Recently it has been suggested that this latter problem reflects a deficit in dorsal stream function. In the present study, this hypothesis was investigated by examining the kinematics of rapid aiming movements. The performance of the participants with WS (n=4) was compared to the performance of participants with DS (n=8), with undifferentiated developmental delays (n=8), and from the general population (n=8). In partial support of the dorsal deficit hypothesis, the results suggest that, compared to people from the other groups, the participants with WS had difficulty in preparing their movements on the basis of the visual and other information available to them. This was particularly evident in their inability to properly scale movement velocities to the amplitude of the movements and in the number of discrete corrections made during movement execution.

Syllabic processing in handwritten word production in German children and adults

The research presented here examines the proposal that orthographic processing in reading polysyllabic words takes place via an analysis of the word into an orthographic/morphological structure called the Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure or BOSS. This structure includes the largest possible coda in the first component (e.g., the THUND of THUNDER) and, as such, it cuts across the phonological syllable boundary (e.g., THUN + DER). The existence of the BOSS has been previously supported by showing that words physically divided at their BOSS (e.g., THUND ER) are faster to recognize than those divided at their syllable (e.g., THUN DER). However, there has been little, if any, report of confirmatory evidence for this conclusion. Three experiments are reported here demonstrating that whether the BOSS division is faster than the syllable division depends crucially on the reading ability of the participants. Better adult reading, independently measured in terms of comprehension, is associated with a preference for the BOSS division while poorer adult reading is more associated with a syllable preference. Such a result potentially explains the conflicting findings that have been previously reported. A number of different explanations are offered for the pattern of results, with the suggestion that poorer adult reading is more oriented toward the pronunciation of the word than is better reading.

Reaching to grasp an object of interest requires a complex sensorimotor transformation-involving eye, head, hand, and postural systems. We show here that discontinuities in development of movement in these systems are dependent not only on age but also vary according to task constraints. Providing external postural support allows us to examine the differential influences of the eye on the hand and the hand on the eye as the ability to isolate and coordinate each system changes with age. Children 4-6 years old had significant difficulty isolating eye movement from head or hand movement, whereas children 7-9 years old showed improved ability to isolate the eye, and by 10-15 years children became proficient in isolating hand movements from eye movements. Postural support had differential effects on the processes of initiation and execution of eye-hand movements. The addition of postural support decreased the time needed for planning the movement, especially in the youngest children, and contributed to increased speed of isolated movements, whereas it caused differential slowing of coordinated movements depending on the child's developmental level. We suggest that the complexity of the results reflects the complexity of changing task requirements as children transition from simpler ballistic control of all systems to flexible, independent but coordinated control of multiple systems.

The present study assessed the underlying mechanism of execution-related dual-task interference in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. The motor bottleneck hypothesis attributes this interference to a processing limitation at the motor level. By contrast, the response monitoring hypothesis attributes it to a bottleneck process that not only selects the appropriate response but also monitors its execution. In two experiments, participants performed ballistic movements of different distances in Task 1 and a choice reaction time task in Task 2. In each experiment, a propagation effect of movement distance on reaction time in Task 2 indicated substantial execution-related interference. To determine the locus of this effect, we manipulated stimulus-response compatibility in Task 2. In line with the motor bottleneck hypothesis, the compatibility effect was partially absorbed during movement execution of Task 1. The results support a motor bottleneck mechanism rather than response monitoring as the source of execution-related dual-task interference.

Parental relationship satisfaction in French young adults associated with alcohol abuse and dependence

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This paper describes the case of a young woman who is an above average reading comprehender despite deficient phonological processing and phonological memory. She has notdeveloped a reliable or readily accessible set of associations between graphemes and phonemes, and is extremely poor at nonword reading and spelling. We found that, although she was well below average in reading aloud and spelling words, what she excelled at was orthographic processing in silentreading tasks. She was above averagein efficiency in choosing thecorrectly spelt word of short word nonword pairs and in deciding on the lexical status of long words and nonwords, and her efficiency in performing lexical decisions on short word and nonword sequences was exceptional. These data suggest that impaired phonological processing capacity can be compensated for by the development of superior orthographic processing ability.

Colateralization of Broca’s area and the visual word form area in left-handers: fMRI evidence