Auditory Lexical Decision Task Research Articles

Visual experience modulates the sensitivity to the distributional history of words in natural language.

Different experiential traces (i.e., linguistic, motor, and perceptual) are likely contributing to the organization of human semantic knowledge. Here, we aimed to address this issue by investigating whether visual experience may affect the sensitivity to distributional priors from natural language. We conducted an independent reanalysis of data from Bottini et al., in which early blind and sighted participants performed an auditory lexical decision task. Since previous research has shown that semantic neighborhood density-the mean distance between a target word and its closest semantic neighbors-can influence performance in lexical decision tasks, we investigated whether vision may alter the reliance on this semantic index. We demonstrate that early blind participants are more sensitive to semantic neighborhood density than sighted participants, as indicated by the significantly faster response times for words with higher levels of semantic neighborhood density shown by the blind group. These findings suggest that an early lack of visual experience may lead to enhanced sensitivity to the distributional history of words in natural language, deepening in turn our understanding of the strict interplay between linguistic and perceptual experience in the organization of conceptual knowledge.

Shared representations in cognate comprehension and production: An online picture naming and lexical decision study with bilingual children

AbstractThe cognate facilitation effect, a classic example of cross-language interaction in the bilingual lexicon, has mostly been studied in adults. We examined the extent to which such effects occurred in simultaneous bilingual children’s word processing, to what extent these were modulated by language dominance, and to what extent this differed between comprehension and production tasks. Simultaneous bilingual Dutch-Greek children, ranging from Dutch-dominant to Greek-dominant, performed auditory lexical decision and picture-naming tasks in an online experiment. Cognate facilitation effects emerged in both tasks but manifested themselves differently. In lexical decision, there was an interaction effect with language dominance in accuracy, while in picture naming there was a main effect in reaction times. These findings suggest that, similar to what has been found for adults, simultaneous bilingual children have an integrated lexicon, in which both languages are interactively connected. Effects may differ as a combined result of factors such as comprehension versus production and individual differences in language dominance. Importantly, despite such differences, our results show that cognate effects emerge across tasks and across a range of individual children’s language dominance, indicating that shared representations within the bilingual lexicon are accessed during both word comprehension and production.

Cross-linguistic effects of form overlap in aural recognition of Spanish–English cognates

Abstract This study investigated the effect of cross-linguistic overlap in L1 and L2 auditory recognition of Spanish–English cognates. The study examined the correlation between objective and subjective measures of overlap and analyzed how these measures predict patterns in auditory recognition. 62 Spanish-speaking learners of English and 63 English-speaking learners of Spanish completed two auditory lexical decision tasks in Spanish and English and a rating task, where they rated the perceived phonological similarity of cognates. The results revealed moderate correlations between subjective and objective measures of overlap. While orthographic overlap had no effect, increased phonological overlap facilitated recognition in L1 and L2 Spanish and English and had larger effects in L2 recognition. Perceived similarity was the best predictor among the measures of overlap. The findings support models suggesting that cross-linguistic co-activation is facilitated by increased form similarity and studies reporting modality dependent effects of cross-linguistic form overlap in lexical recognition.

Perceptual adaptation to unfamiliar dialect variation

Regional varieties of a language often differ in the phonetic realization of shared phonological categories, resulting in perceptual ambiguity. In perceptual tasks, listeners with more exposure to regional dialect variation perform differently than listeners with less exposure, reflecting underlying differences in lexical competition. In this study, we examined perceptual adaptation to one authentic dialect of American English and one novel dialect to test for adaptation to unfamiliar variation. Our materials contained contrasts that are perceptually ambiguous in Southern American English and in the novel dialect we created, in which linguistically trained bilinguals substituted English /ow/ with Spanish /o/. Participants heard a familiarization passage spoken in a Southern or Novel dialect and then completed an auditory lexical decision task. Adaptation was assessed by differences in accuracy and response times for each vowel contrast, talker dialect, and familiarization dialect. Results revealed lower accuracy and slower response times for both target contrasts when pronounced in their respective dialects. These effects reflect the difficulty in processing perceptually ambiguous stimuli. Familiarization dialect had no effect on accuracy or response times; future analyses will include quantification of listener regional dialect exposure to better assess its influence on processing novel variation.

Frequency effects in linear discriminative learning.

Word frequency is a strong predictor in most lexical processing tasks. Thus, any model of word recognition needs to account for how word frequency effects arise. The Discriminative Lexicon Model (DLM) models lexical processing with mappings between words' forms and their meanings. Comprehension and production are modeled via linear mappings between the two domains. So far, the mappings within the model can either be obtained incrementally via error-driven learning, a computationally expensive process able to capture frequency effects, or in an efficient, but frequency-agnostic solution modeling the theoretical endstate of learning (EL) where all words are learned optimally. In the present study we show how an efficient, yet frequency-informed mapping between form and meaning can be obtained (Frequency-informed learning; FIL). We find that FIL well approximates an incremental solution while being computationally much cheaper. FIL shows a relatively low type- and high token-accuracy, demonstrating that the model is able to process most word tokens encountered by speakers in daily life correctly. We use FIL to model reaction times in the Dutch Lexicon Project by means of a Gaussian Location Scale Model and find that FIL predicts well the S-shaped relationship between frequency and the mean of reaction times but underestimates the variance of reaction times for low frequency words. FIL is also better able to account for priming effects in an auditory lexical decision task in Mandarin Chinese, compared to EL. Finally, we used ordered data from CHILDES to compare mappings obtained with FIL and incremental learning. We show that the mappings are highly correlated, but that with FIL some nuances based on word ordering effects are lost. Our results show how frequency effects in a learning model can be simulated efficiently, and raise questions about how to best account for low-frequency words in cognitive models.

Emotion from the sound of a word: Statistical relationships between surface form and valence of English words influence lexical access and memory.

It is generally accepted that a word's emotional valence (i.e., whether a word is perceived as positive, negative, or neutral) influences how it is accessed and remembered. There is also evidence that the affective content of some words is represented in nonarbitrary sound-meaning associations (i.e., emotional sound symbolism). We investigated whether more extensive statistical relationships exist between the surface form properties of English words and ratings of their emotional valence, that is, form typicality. We found significant form typicality for both valence and extremity of valence (the absolute distance from the midpoint of the rating scale, regardless of polarity). Next, using behavioral megastudy data sets, we show that measures of emotional form typicality are significant predictors of lexical access during written and auditory lexical decision and reading aloud tasks in addition to recognition memory performance. These findings show nonarbitrary form-valence mappings in English are accessed automatically during language and verbal memory processing. We discuss how these findings might be incorporated into theoretical accounts that implement Bayesian statistical inference. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognate facilitation in single- and dual-language contexts in bilingual children’s word processing

Abstract We examined the extent to which cognate facilitation effects occurred in simultaneous bilingual children’s production and comprehension and how these were modulated by language dominance and language context. Bilingual Dutch-German children, ranging from Dutch-dominant to German-dominant, performed picture naming and auditory lexical decision tasks in single-language and dual-language contexts. Language context was manipulated with respect to the language of communication (with the experimenter and in instructional videos) and by means of proficiency tasks. Cognate facilitation effects emerged in both production and comprehension and interacted with both dominance and context. In a single-language context, stronger cognate facilitation effects were found for picture naming in children’s less dominant language, in line with previous studies on individual differences in lexical activation. In the dual-language context, this pattern was reversed, suggesting inhibition of the dominant language at the decision level. Similar effects were observed in lexical decision. These findings provide evidence for an integrated bilingual lexicon in simultaneous bilingual children and shed more light on the complex interplay between lexicon-internal and lexicon-external factors modulating the extent of lexical cross-linguistic influence more generally.

On the effects of task focus and processing level on the perception–production link in second-language speech learning

AbstractThis study presents a reanalysis of existing data to investigate whether a relationship between perception and production abilities regarding a challenging second-language (L2) phonological contrast is observable (a) when both modalities must rely on accessing stored lexical representations and (b) when there is an asymmetry in task focus between perception and production. In the original studies, German learners of English were tested on their mastery of the English /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast in an auditory lexical decision task with phonological substitutions, a word-reading task, and a segmentally focused imitation task. Results showed that accurate nonword rejection in the lexical decision task was predicted by the Euclidean distance between the two vowels in word reading but not in imitation. These results extend previous findings to lexical perception and production, highlight the influence of task focus on the degree of coupling between the two modalities, and may have important implications for pronunciation training methods.

The NeuroBel: A Screening Test for Verbal Language Impairment in Spanish-Speaking Elderly People With Cognitive Decline.

The NeuroBel is a short test that can detect cognitive decline using language tasks. This study replicated previous research using larger clinical samples from three Spanish-speaking countries. Eight tasks were used to analyze verbal language functioning using a psycholinguistic approach. A total of 232 elderly, monolingual Spanish speakers from Spain, Cuba, and Colombia participated in this study. Of these, 76 had Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the initial phase, 75 had mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 81 did not exhibit cognitive impairment (healthy controls). Significant differences were observed among the three clinical groups. The participants with AD and the participants with MCI had significantly lower NeuroBel scores than the control group on most of the tasks. However, repetition (in AD vs. MCI) and auditory lexical decision (in MCI vs. control) tasks were not significant in Tukey's post hoc tests. Discriminant analysis showed that 80.6% of the participants were correctly classified into the original groups and revealed the tasks that were the best and worst for differentiating among groups. The receiver-operating characteristic curves showed high sensitivity for AD and MCI. The area under the curve was .97 in the contrast of AD versus MCI + controls, .96 in the determination of overall cognitive decline (AD + MCI vs. controls), and .93 in the contrast of MCI and control groups. This study confirmed that the NeuroBel is a suitable test for detecting cognitive decline based on language impairment in Spanish-speaking elderly people.

Orthography-phonology consistency in English: Theory- and data-driven measures and their impact on auditory vs. visual word recognition.

Research on orthographic consistency in English words has selectively identified different sub-syllabic units in isolation (grapheme, onset, vowel, coda, rime), yet there is no comprehensive assessment of how these measures affect word identification when taken together. To study which aspects of consistency are more psychologically relevant, we investigated their independent and composite effects on human reading behavior using large-scale databases. Study 1 found effects on adults' naming responses of both feedforward consistency (orthography to phonology) and feedback consistency (phonology to orthography). Study 2 found feedback but no feedforward consistency effects on visual and auditory lexical decision tasks, with the best predictor being a composite measure of consistency across grapheme, rime, OVC, and word-initial letter-phoneme. In Study 3, we explicitly modeled the reading process with forward and backward flow in a bidirectionally connected neural network. The model captured latent dimensions of quasi-regular mapping that explain additional variance in human reading and spelling behavior, compared to the established measures. Together, the results suggest interactive activation between phonological and orthographic word representations. They also validate the role of computational analyses of language to better understand how print maps to sound, and what properties of natural language affect reading complexity.

Non-arbitrary mappings between size and sound of English words: Form typicality effects during lexical access and memory.

A century of research has provided evidence of limited size sound symbolism in English, that is, certain vowels are non-arbitrarily associated with words denoting small versus large referents (e.g., /i/ as in teensy and /ɑ/ as in tall). In the present study, we investigated more extensive statistical regularities between surface form properties of English words and ratings of their semantic size, that is, form typicality, and its impact on language and memory processing. Our findings provide the first evidence of significant word form typicality for semantic size. In five empirical studies using behavioural megastudy data sets of performance on written and auditory lexical decision, reading aloud, semantic decision, and recognition memory tasks, we show that form typicality for size is a stronger and more consistent predictor of lexical access during word comprehension and production than semantic size, in addition to playing a significant role in verbal memory. The empirical results demonstrate that statistical information about non-arbitrary form-size mappings is accessed automatically during language and verbal memory processing, unlike semantic size that is largely dependent on task contexts that explicitly require participants to access size knowledge. We discuss how a priori knowledge about non-arbitrary form-meaning associations in the lexicon might be incorporated in models of language processing that implement Bayesian statistical inference.

Second language learners acquire reduced word forms just like they acquire full forms

Abstract We investigated the effect of auditory exposure on the recognition of full (i.e., canonical) and reduced (i.e., with weakened or deleted sounds) word forms by beginner second language (L2) learners. We taught three participant groups the same French schwa words. One group was trained only on the full (i.e., with schwa) forms, one group on the reduced forms (i.e., without schwa) only, and one group on both the full and reduced forms of each word. We then tested participants’ recognition of both forms in an auditory lexical decision task. We found that participants’ accuracy for a form was proportional to the exposure they received at training for that form. Both participants’ groups trained on one form recognized the untrained form in about a third of the trials. We conclude that exposure is a crucial factor in learning L2 reduced forms and that listeners use both retrieval from storage and goodness of fit (including reconstruction) mechanisms, in the same way for full as for reduced forms.

How Do Adults with Dyslexia Recognize Spoken Words? Evidence from Behavioral and EEG Data

ABSTRACT Purpose In adults with dyslexia (DYS), the persistent influence of phonological deficits on spoken language processing has mainly been examined in either perceptual tasks or those tapping complex cognitive operations. Much less attention is devoted to spoken word recognition per se. Our study aimed to fill this gap. Method Adults with and without dyslexia (for both groups: N = 30, mean age = 21 years, 50% female, 100% white European) performed an auditory lexical decision task. Performance and ERP were recorded. Results Reaction times showed a lexicality effect in both groups although they differed in ERP responses to stimulus lexicality. Skilled readers showed the typical amplitude enhancement for pseudowords compared to words in a late phase of N400 (414-581msec) whereas DYS showed the opposite pattern in an earlier phase of N400 (246-413msec). Both groups showed a stronger negativity during pseudowords processing in the late post-lexical stage (582-800msec). Conclusions ERP data showed subtle differences between the two populations during the lexical stage of word recognition despite their comparable behavioral outcomes. We hypothesized that a stronger reliance on intact semantic knowledge might contribute to the general enhanced and sustained ERP responses to words in DYS across different phases of lexical processing, although confirmation is needed.

Consonant bias in adult lexical processing under acoustically degraded listening conditions.

Consonants facilitate lexical processing across many languages, including French. This study investigates whether acoustic degradation affects this phonological bias in an auditory lexical decision task. French words were processed using an eight-band vocoder, degrading their frequency modulations (FM) while preserving original amplitude modulations (AM). Adult French natives were presented with these French words, preceded by similarly processed pseudoword primes sharing their vowels, consonants, or neither. Results reveal a consonant bias in the listeners' accuracy and response times, despite the reduced spectral and FM information. These degraded conditions resemble current cochlear-implant processors, and attest to the robustness of this phonological bias.

The Timing Tells the Tale: Multiple Morphological Processes in Children’s and Adults’ Spelling

ABSTRACT Purpose Despite abundant evidence that morphemes are important in reading and spelling, little is known about the nature of processing in spelling. This study identifies multiple morphological processes over the time course of spelling, revealing that these processes are influenced by development. Method Twenty adults and 46 children (8;0–12;1 years) completed an auditory lexical decision task followed by a spelling task, to explore the effects of morphological structure and cross-modal morphological priming by analyzing handwriting latencies before and during spelling production. Results Adults and children both demonstrated morphological processing during lexical access – they were faster to begin to write morphologically complex words (e.g., artist) compared to matched monomorphemic controls (e.g., article). Adults (but not children) also demonstrated cross-modal morphological priming. Further, adults (but not children) demonstrated the effects of morphological processing during spelling production. Inter-letter latencies were shorter between the last two letters of a root morpheme than the same letters in monomorphemic control words (e.g., ar[]tist compared to ar[]ticle). Conclusion Together, these findings reflect multiple facilitative effects of morphological processing during spelling production – during lexical access and spelling production. This highlights the need for greater integration of morphological processes into theories of skilled spelling and spelling development.

Noise Modulates Crosslinguistic Effects on Second-Language Auditory Word Recognition.

This study investigates whether crosslinguistic effects on auditory word recognition are modulated by the quality of the auditory signal (clear and noisy). In an online experiment, a group of Spanish-English bilingual listeners performed an auditory lexical decision task, in their second language, English. Words and pseudowords were either presented in the clear or were embedded in white auditory noise. Target words were varied in the degree to which they overlapped in their phonological form with their translation equivalents and were categorized according to their overlap as cognates (form and meaning) or noncognates (meaning only). In order to test for effects of crosslinguistic competition, the phonological neighborhood density of the targets' translations was also manipulated. The results show that crosslinguistic effects are impacted by noise; when the translation had a high neighborhood density, performance was worse for cognates than for noncognates, especially in noise. The findings suggest that noise increases lexical competition across languages, as it does within a language, and that the crosslinguistic phonological overlap for cognates compared with noncognates can further increase the pool of competitors by co-activating crosslinguistic lexical candidates. The results are discussed within the context of the bilingual word recognition literature and models of language and bilingual lexical processing.

Spectral degradation influences phonological memory in typically hearing adults

ABSTRACT Phonological processing is a fundamental component of language, can be impaired in people with hearing loss, and involves several confounded subprocesses. The purpose of this study was to systematically examine several phonological subprocesses – i.e., the spectral quality of auditory input and phonological short-term and long-term memory – in order to better understand how they interact with one another in basic linguistic tasks. Using an experimental, within-subjects design, 30 typically-hearing adults completed nonword repetition (NWR) and auditory lexical decision (ALD) tasks varying in spectral quality (normal versus spectrally-degraded), consonant age of acquisition (CAoA; i.e. early-acquired versus late-acquired consonants), syllable length (NWR task), and lexical status (ALD task). In NWR, spectral degradation muted the word length effect, though performance differed depending on how familiar participants were with the degraded stimuli. ALD findings showed that the magnitude of the degradation effect varied between stimuli comprising early-acquired versus late-acquired consonants. The robust effect of spectral degradation on phonological short-term and long-term memory provides a model of the interactive nature of these subprocesses in typical adults. Future work with populations with hearing loss can provide a comparison to help understand how the typical and clinical phonological systems differ.

Do subsyllabic units play a role in Mandarin spoken word recognition? Evidence from phonotactic processing

This study investigates the roles of Mandarin subsyllabic units in spoken word recognition by examining the neural processing of two phonotactic anomalies: (1) segmental gaps, which contain a non-existing combination of segments (e.g., *[ki1]); and (2) tonal gaps, which refer to a nonword comprised of possible segment combinations with an incongruous tone (e.g., *[tau2]; cf. [tau1] “knife”). Event-related potentials were recorded while participants performed an auditory lexical decision task. The response to segmental gaps differed from the other stimuli types in the amplitudes and scalp distributions of several components, including the P350, the N400, and the late positive complex. The P350 effect occurred around 370 ms before the entire syllable was revealed, indicating that lexical processing is not based solely on syllable representations. Furthermore, the overall differences between segmental and tonal gaps suggest that tones and vowels are dissociable. These results thus provide converging evidence for the view that Mandarin syllables are processed incrementally through phonemes. • The phonotactic effect on the ERP appears before the syllable ends. • Tone- and segment-induced phonotactic anomalies evoke different neural responses. • Monosyllabic words are processed incrementally through subsyllabic units. • Vowels and tones are dissociable in the later time course of lexical access.

Affective valence of words differentially affects visual and auditory word recognition.

Recognizing written or spoken words involves a sequence of processing stages, transforming sensory features into lexical-semantic representations. Whereas the later processing stages are common across modalities, the initial stages are modality-specific. In the visual modality, previous studies have shown that words with positive valence are recognized faster than neutral words. Here, we examined whether the effects of valence on word recognition are specific to the visual modality or are common across visual and auditory modalities. To address this question, we analyzed multiple large databases of visual and auditory lexical decision tasks, relating the valence of words to lexical decision times while controlling for a large number of variables, including arousal and frequency. We found that valence differentially influenced visual and auditory word recognition. Valence had an asymmetric effect on visual lexical decision times, primarily speeding up recognition of positive words. By contrast, valence had a symmetric effect on auditory lexical decision times, with both negative and positive words speeding up word recognition relative to neutral words. The modality-specificity of valence effects were consistent across databases and were observed when the same sets of words were compared across modalities. We interpret these findings as indicating that valence influences word recognition partly at the sensory-perceptual stage. We relate these effects to the effects of positive (reward) and negative (punishment) reinforcers on perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Tracking lexical access and code switching in multilingual participants with different degrees of simultaneous interpretation expertise.

With the worldwide increase in people speaking more than one language, a better understanding of the behavioural and neural mechanisms governing lexical selection, lexical access in multiple languages and code switching has attracted widespread interest from several disciplines. Previous studies documented higher costs when processing a non‐native (L2) than a native (L1) language or when switching from L2 to L1. However, studies on auditory language reception are still scarce and did not take into account the degree of switching experience. Accordingly, in the present study, we combined behavioural and electrophysiological measurements to assess lexical access in L1 and L2 as well as code switching in professional simultaneous interpreters, trainee interpreters, foreign language teachers and Anglistics students, while the participants performed a bilingual auditory lexical decision task. The purpose of this study was to expand the knowledge on code switching in auditory language processing and examine whether the degree of simultaneous interpretation experience might reduce switching costs. As a main result, we revealed that L2 compared to L1 trials, as well as switch compared to non‐switch trials, generally resulted in lower accuracies, longer reaction times and increased N400 amplitudes in all groups of participants. Otherwise, we did not reveal any influence of switching direction and interpretation expertise on N400 parameters. Taken together, these results suggest that a late age of L2 acquisition leads to switching costs, irrespective of proficiency level. Furthermore, we provided first evidence that simultaneous interpretation training does not diminish switching costs, at least when focusing on lexical access.