Auditory Lexical Decision Task Research Articles

A MEG Investigation of Single-Word Auditory Comprehension in Aphasia

To explore whether individuals with aphasia exhibit differences in the M350, an electrophysiological marker of lexical activation, compared with healthy controls. Seven people with aphasia, 9 age-matched controls, and 10 younger controls completed an auditory lexical decision task while cortical activity was recorded with magnetoencephalography. There were 2 stimulus conditions of interest: identity primed (i.e., a word preceded by itself) and semantic primed (i.e., a word preceded by a semantically related word). Latency and amplitude of the M350 response as well as reaction time were measured. Consistent with the age-matched control group, the group with aphasia showed both identity and semantic priming behaviorally. In contrast to the control groups, the group with aphasia did not show either semantic or identity priming of the M350 response. This group also demonstrated longer M350 latencies than either control group. Furthermore, within this group, M350 latency was positively correlated with a measure of semantic impairment. These findings highlight the usefulness of temporally sensitive measures when studying aphasia and demonstrate that the latency of electrophysiological markers is of interest in this population. In particular, increased M350 latency appears to be indicative of a semantic processing impairment.

Implicit Semantic Priming in Spanish-Speaking Children and Adults: An Auditory Lexical Decision Task

Although receptive priming has long been used as a way to examine lexical access in adults, few studies have applied this method to children and rarely in an auditory modality. We compared auditory associative priming in children and adults. A testing battery and a Lexical Decision (LD) task was administered to 42 adults and 27 children (8;1-10; 11 years-old) from Spain. They listened to Spanish word pairs (semantically related/unrelated word pairs and word-pseudoword pairs), and tone pairs. Then participants pressed one key for word pairs, and another for pairs with a word and a pseudoword. They also had to press the two keys alternatively for tone pairs as a basic auditory control. Both groups of participants, children and adults, exhibited semantic priming, with significantly faster Reaction Times (RTs) to semantically related word pairs than to unrelated pairs and to the two word-pseudoword sets. The priming effect was twice as large in the adults compared to children, and the children (not the adults) were significantly slower in their response to word-pseudoword pairs than to the unrelated word pairs. Moreover, accuracy was somewhat higher in adults than children for each word pair type, but especially in the word-pseudoword pairs. As expected, children were significantly slower than adults in the RTs for all stimulus types, and their RTs decreased significantly from 8 to 10 years of age and they also decreased in relation to some of their language abilities development (e.g., relative clauses comprehension). In both age groups, the Reaction Time average for tone pairs was lower than for speech pairs, but only all adults obtained 100% accuracy (which was slightly lower in children). Auditory processing and semantic networks are still developing in 8-10 year old children.

Accent effects in auditory processing by native and non‐native speakers.

The current study examined whether non‐native listeners’ perception is facilitated by a match between their L1 and the accent with which L2 words are pronounced. An auditory lexical decision task was used, where English words and nonwords were pronounced by a native speaker of English or a native speaker of Mexican Spanish. Half the words were cognates (overlapping in phonetic form and meaning across languages) while half were noncognates. Spanish‐English bilinguals from Mexico and English‐speaking monolinguals listened to accented and nonaccented stimuli and decided as quickly as possible whether they were English words. Results indicate an effect of lexical status and accent in both listener groups, with faster reaction times (RTs) for words than nonwords, and slower RTs on accented than nonaccented stimuli. However, English‐speaking monolinguals were slower than Spanish‐English bilinguals in recognizing accented English words. Moreover, Spanish‐English bilinguals demonstrated faster RTs for cognates than for noncognates, but only when these were spoken with a Spanish accent. Results indicate that non‐native accent influences auditory processing even in listeners who are familiar with the particular accent. Further, cognate effects indicate that lexical‐phonological variables interact with acoustical factors in determining the efficiency with which the bilingual lexical system processes auditory information.

Do dyslexics have auditory input processing difficulties?

ABSTRACTWord production difficulties are well documented in dyslexia, whereas the results are mixed for receptive phonological processing. This asymmetry raises the possibility that the core phonological deficit of dyslexia is restricted to output processing stages. The present study investigated whether a group of dyslexics had word level receptive difficulties using an auditory lexical decision task with long words and nonsense words. The dyslexics were slower and less accurate than chronological age controls in an auditory lexical decision task, with disproportionate low performance on nonsense words. The finding suggests that input processing difficulties are associated with the phonological deficit, but that these difficulties may be stronger above the level of phoneme perception.

Is developmental dyslexia modality specific? A visual-auditory comparison of Italian dyslexics

Although developmental dyslexia is often referred to as a cross-modal disturbance, tests of different modalities using the same stimuli are lacking. We compared the performance of 23 children with dyslexia and 42 chronologically matched control readers on reading versus repetition tasks and visual versus auditory lexical decision using the same stimuli. With respect to control readers, children with dyslexia were impaired only on stimuli in the visual modality; they had no deficit on the repetition and auditory lexical decision tasks. By applying the rate-amount model (Faust et al., 1999), we showed that performance of children with dyslexia on visual (but not auditory) tasks was associated with that of control readers by a linear relationship (with a 1.78 slope), suggesting that a global factor accounts for visual (but not auditory) task performance.We conclude that the processing of linguistic stimuli in the visual and auditory modalities is carried out by independent processes and that dyslexic children have a selective deficit in the visual modality.

The effect of reduction on the processing of flaps and /g/ in isolated words

This study investigates the comprehension of words with reduced and unreduced flaps and /g/s by means of an auditory lexical decision task. The experimental stimuli are compared to words produced in various speech styles confirming their naturalness and illustrating the distribution of the experimental stimuli. The experiment shows that reduced words are more difficult to process than unreduced words, and that listeners' response latencies for unreduced words are longest for the highest and lowest frequencies. Listeners' error rates are highest for the lowest frequency items. A comparison of the flap stimuli to the /g/ stimuli reveals no difference in processing between the two phonemes. When an acoustic measure (change in intensity) is used as a predictor, instead of a dichotomous factor contrasting reduced with unreduced, items on the extreme ends of the acoustic measure (very reduced or very unreduced) have longer response latencies than the middle items. The results of the second analysis supports the view that listeners optimize comprehension for intermediate degrees of reduction. The data also suggests that production frequency, or predictability (e.g., the likelihood of a reduced flap) affects the comprehension of reduced and unreduced words, such that highly predictable productions have shorter response latencies.

Orthographic Consistency and Word-Frequency Effects in Auditory Word Recognition: New Evidence from Lexical Decision and Rime Detection

Many studies have repeatedly shown an orthographic consistency effect in the auditory lexical decision task. Words with phonological rimes that could be spelled in multiple ways (i.e., inconsistent words) typically produce longer auditory lexical decision latencies and more errors than do words with rimes that could be spelled in only one way (i.e., consistent words). These results have been extended to different languages and tasks, suggesting that the effect is quite general and robust. Despite this growing body of evidence, some psycholinguists believe that orthographic effects on spoken language are exclusively strategic, post-lexical, or restricted to peculiar (low-frequency) words. In the present study, we manipulated consistency and word-frequency orthogonally in order to explore whether the orthographic consistency effect extends to high-frequency words. Two different tasks were used: lexical decision and rime detection. Both tasks produced reliable consistency effects for both low- and high-frequency words. Furthermore, in Experiment 1 (lexical decision), an interaction revealed a stronger consistency effect for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words, as initially predicted by Ziegler and Ferrand (1998), whereas no interaction was found in Experiment 2 (rime detection). Our results extend previous findings by showing that the orthographic consistency effect is obtained not only for low-frequency words but also for high-frequency words. Furthermore, these effects were also obtained in a rime detection task, which does not require the explicit processing of orthographic structure. Globally, our results suggest that literacy changes the way people process spoken words, even for frequent words.

Congruence between ‘word age’ and ‘voice age’ facilitates lexical access

AbstractIn Exemplar Theory, the mental lexical representation of a word is a distribution over memories of past experiences with that word. These memories are rich with phonetic and indexical detail. At the very core of the theory, then, is the prediction that individual words should have a unique phonetic distribution shaped by the environments in which they were most encountered. We pursue this hypothesis directly by exploring the prediction that a word should be more easily processed when it contains characteristics that most resemble the listener's accumulated past experience with that word. Twenty-five participants took part in an auditory lexical decision task where they heard words that are usually said more by older speakers, words usually said more by younger speakers, and age-neutral words. These words were presented in both an older and a younger voice. Accuracy rates increased and response times decreased when voice age and word age matched. This provides robust evidence that words are more easily processed when they contain characteristics that most resemble the listener's accumulated past experience with that word, providing verification of a key prediction of exemplar models of the lexicon.

Knowledge of a second language influences auditory word recognition in the native language.

Many studies in bilingual visual word recognition have demonstrated that lexical access is not language selective. However, research on bilingual word recognition in the auditory modality has been scarce, and it has yielded mixed results with regard to the degree of this language nonselectivity. In the present study, we investigated whether listening to a second language (L2) is influenced by knowledge of the native language (L1) and, more important, whether listening to the L1 is also influenced by knowledge of an L2. Additionally, we investigated whether the listener's selectivity of lexical access is influenced by the speaker's L1 (and thus his or her accent). With this aim, Dutch-English bilinguals completed an English (Experiment 1) and a Dutch (Experiment 3) auditory lexical decision task. As a control, the English auditory lexical decision task was also completed by English monolinguals (Experiment 2). Targets were pronounced by a native Dutch speaker with English as the L2 (Experiments 1A, 2A, and 3A) or by a native English speaker with Dutch as the L2 (Experiments 1B, 2B, and 3B). In all experiments, Dutch-English bilinguals recognized interlingual homophones (e.g., lief [sweet]-leaf /li:f/) significantly slower than matched control words, whereas the English monolinguals showed no effect. These results indicate that (a) lexical access in bilingual auditory word recognition is not language selective in L2, nor in L1, and (b) language-specific subphonological cues do not annul cross-lingual interactions.

On advantage of seeing text and hearing speech

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of congruence between the sensory modality through which a concept can be experienced and the modality through which the word denoting that concept is perceived during word recognition. Words denoting concepts that can be experienced visually (e.g. ?color?) and words denoting concepts that can be experienced auditorily (e.g. ?noise?) were presented both visually and auditorily. We observed shorter processing latencies when there was a match between the modality through which a concept could be experienced and the modality through which a word denoting that concept was presented. In visual lexical decision task, ?color? was recognized faster than ?noise?, whereas in auditory lexical decision task, ?noise? was recognized faster than ?color?. The obtained pattern of results can not be accounted for by exclusive amodal theories, whereas it can be easily integrated in theories based on perceptual representations. <br><br><font color="red"><b> This article has been corrected. Link to the correction <u><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/PSI1602211E">10.2298/PSI1602211E</a><u></b></font>

Individual differences in the size of orthographic effects in spoken word recognition: The role of listeners' orthographic skills

ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that the extent to which orthography affects spoken word recognition in literate adults is related to their spelling proficiency. The study included two components: an auditory lexical decision task manipulating orthographic consistency of the stimuli and a spelling test. The results replicated previously found effects of orthographic consistency on the accuracy and latency of lexical decisions. The size of the orthographic effect in the auditory task was estimated for each participant. The variability in the orthographic effect size among participants was partially explained by their spelling skills. Possible interpretations of this finding and methodological implications for future research are discussed.

Experimental evidence for phoneme‐level inhibition in spoken word recognition.

The TRACE model of spoken word recognition [McClelland and Elman (1986)] contains phoneme‐level inhibition whereas the MERGE model [Norris et al. (2000)] does not. Little has been reported in the experimental literature to bear on the question of phoneme‐level inhibition, so the current study aims to fill this gap. An auditory lexical decision task was conducted, where participants were tested on English words preceded by isolated English sounds as primes. The relatedness of the prime sound to the final sound of the target word was manipulated. Phoneme‐level inhibition is demonstrated when participants respond more slowly in the Similar condition (e.g., /sh/ before “bus”) than in the Identical (e.g., /s/ before “bus”) and Unrelated (e.g., /m/ before “bus”) conditions. This task revealed that phoneme‐level inhibition was active at ISIs of 250 and 500 ms, but not 50 ms. A second lexical decision task indicated that inhibition begins after 125 ms and ends by 1000 ms. These results support models of word recognition that contain phoneme‐level inhibition. Finally, a single‐word shadowing task, in which participants repeat words primed by isolated English sounds as quickly as possible, is expected to replicate these findings and to extend them by adding speech error data.

How Does Learning to Read Affect Speech Perception?

Behavioral studies have demonstrated that learning to read and write affects the processing of spoken language. The present study investigates the neural mechanism underlying the emergence of such orthographic effects during speech processing. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to tease apart two competing hypotheses that consider this orthographic influence to be either a consequence of a change in the nature of the phonological representations during literacy acquisition or a consequence of online coactivation of the orthographic and phonological representations during speech processing. Participants performed an auditory lexical decision task in which the orthographic consistency of spoken words was manipulated and repetitive TMS was used to interfere with either phonological or orthographic processing by stimulating left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) or left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC), respectively. The advantage for consistently spelled words was removed only when the stimulation was delivered to SMG and not to vOTC, providing strong evidence that this effect arises at a phonological, rather than an orthographic, level. We propose a possible mechanistic explanation for the role of SMG in phonological processing and how this is affected by learning to read.

Decreased Sensitivity to Phonemic Mismatch in Spoken Word Processing in Adult Developmental Dyslexia

Initial lexical activation in typical populations is a direct reflection of the goodness of fit between the presented stimulus and the intended target. In this study, lexical activation was investigated upon presentation of polysyllabic pseudowords (such as procodile for crocodile) for the atypical population of dyslexic adults to see to what extent mismatching phonemic information affects lexical activation in the face of overwhelming support for one specific lexical candidate. Results of an auditory lexical decision task showed that sensitivity to phonemic mismatch was less in the dyslexic population, compared to the respective control group. However, the dyslexic participants were outperformed by their controls only for word-initial mismatches. It is argued that a subtle speech decoding deficit affects lexical activation levels and makes spoken word processing less robust against distortion.

Study on auditory semantic priming effects in patients with aphasia

Objective To explore the characteristics of semantic priming effects in Chinese words with different association strength in patients with aphasia by auditory stimulation.Method Stimulus-response word pairs with different association strength including strong,moderate,weak,and no association categories were chosen from word association thesaurus as experiment materials.Both patients with aphasia(n=11)and normal subjects (n=16)were requested to finish an auditory lexical decision task for target words.Semantic priming effects were investigated by means of measuring reaction time(RT)and error rate of each word-pair.Results In patients with aphasia and normal subjects,the mean RTs were significantly shorter in strong,moderate and weak association strength words than in no association strength words(patients with aphasia(1270.20±47.70)ms,(1340.50±266.25)ms,(1429.70±317.07)ms vs(1549.00±325.87)ms,P＜0.05 and normal subjects(1140.2±274.48)ms,(1196.50±284.06)ms,(1262.10±274.31)ms vs(1391.20±315.68)ms,P＜0.05).In strong,moderate,and no association strength words,the mean RTs were no significant differences between two groups.In the weak association strength words,mean RTs were significantly longer in patients with aphasia than in normal subjects((1429.70±317.07)ms vs(1262.10±274.31)ms,P＜0.05).In two groups,mean error rates were significantly less in strong,moderate and weak association strength words than in no association strength words(patients with aphasia:7.73±6.07,4.55±7.23,6.82±8.15 vs 14.09±12.41,P＜0.05 and normal subjects:3.44±4.37,2.81±3.64,5.31±5.91 vs 10.94±11.14,P＜0.05).However,in strong association strength words,mean error rates were significantly higher in patients with aphasia than in normal subjects(7.73±6.07 vs 3.44±4.37,P＜0.05).In moderate,weak and no association strength words,there were no significant differences between two groups.Conclusion The patients with aphasia follow gradient of the association strength words like normal subjects and have semantic priming effects in the strong,moderate association strength words. Key words: Association strength; Semantic priming; Aphasia; Reaction time

Lexical Plasticity in Early Bilinguals Does Not Alter Phoneme Categories: II. Experimental Evidence

When listening to modified speech, either naturally or artificially altered, the human perceptual system rapidly adapts to it. There is some debate about the nature of the mechanisms underlying this adaptation. Although some authors propose that listeners modify their prelexical representations, others assume changes at the lexical level. Recently, Larsson, Vera, Sebastian-Galles, and Deco [Lexical plasticity in early bilinguals does not alter phoneme categories: I. Neurodynamical modelling. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 76-94, 2008] proposed a biologically plausible computational model to account for some existing data, one which successfully modeled how long-term exposure to a dialect triggers the creation of new lexical entries. One specific prediction of the model was that prelexical (phoneme) representations should not be affected by dialectal exposure (as long as the listener is exposed to both standard and dialectal pronunciations). Here we present a series of experiments testing the predictions of the model. Native listeners of Catalan, with extended exposure to Spanish-accented Catalan, were tested on different auditory lexical decision tasks and phoneme discrimination tasks. Behavioral and electrophysiological recordings were obtained. The results supported the predictions of our model. On the one hand, both error rates and N400 measurements indicated the existence of alternative lexical entries for dialectal varieties. On the other hand, no evidence of alterations at the phoneme level, either in the behavioral discrimination task or in the electrophysiological measurement (MMN), could be detected. The results of the present study are compared with those obtained in short-term laboratory exposures in an attempt to provide an integrative account.

Looking for phoneme-level inhibition in spoken word recognition using auditory lexical decision.

The TRACE model of spoken word recognition [McClelland & Elman (1986)] contains phoneme-level inhibition while the MERGE model [Norris et al. (2000)] does not include active competition between phonemes. Previous work found evidence for facilitation at the phoneme level and competition at the lexical level, but little research has been conducted looking for the existence of inhibition between phonemes. Using an auditory lexical decision task, the current study looks for phoneme-level inhibition by giving participants English target words preceded by isolated English sounds as primes. There are three conditions depending on how related the prime sound is to the final phoneme of the target word: identical (e.g., [s] before “gas”), similar (e.g., [s] before “cash”), and unrelated (e.g., [m] before gas). Facilitation, or faster average reaction times (RTs), is expected in the identical condition relative to the baseline unrelated condition. If facilitation is also found in the similar condition, the results will provide evidence against phoneme-level inhibition, supporting an approach with gradient activation of phonemes. However, if the average RT for the similar condition is greater than or equal to that of the unrelated condition, the results will support models of spoken word recognition containing phoneme-level inhibition.

Testing two models of lexical access: Korean homonyms in an auditory lexical decision task

Testing two models of lexical access: Korean homonyms in an auditory lexical decision task

Short Article: The Hebb Repetition Effect as a Laboratory Analogue of Novel Word Learning

The present study tests the hypothesis that a common ordering mechanism underlies both short-term serial recall of verbal materials and the acquisition of novel long-term lexical representations, using the Hebb repetition effect. In the first experiment, participants recalled visually presented nonsense syllables following a typical Hebb effect learning protocol. Replicating the Hebb repetition effect, we observed improved recall for repeated sequences of syllables. In the second experiment, the same participants performed an auditory lexical decision task, which included nonwords that were constructed from the syllables used in the first experiment. We observed inhibited rejection of nonwords that were composed of the repeated Hebb sequences, compared to nonwords that were built from nonrepeated filler sequences. This suggests that a long-term phonological lexical representation developed during Hebb learning. Accordingly, the relation between immediate serial recall and word learning is made explicit by arguing that the Hebb repetition effect is a laboratory analogue of naturalistic vocabulary acquisition.

Spoken word processing and the effect of phonemic mismatch in aphasia

Background: There is evidence that, unlike in typical populations, initial lexical activation upon hearing spoken words in aphasic patients is not a direct reflection of the goodness of fit between the presented stimulus and the intended target. Earlier studies have mainly used short monosyllabic target words. Short words are relatively difficult to recognise because they are not highly redundant: changing one phoneme will often result in a (similar‐sounding) different word. Aims: The present study aimed to investigate sensitivity of the lexical recognition system in aphasia. The focus was on longer words that contain more redundancy, to investigate whether aphasic adults might be impaired in deactivation of strongly activated lexical candidates. This was done by studying lexical activation upon presentation of spoken polysyllabic pseudowords (such as procodile) to see to what extent mismatching phonemic information leads to deactivation in the face of overwhelming support for one specific lexical candidate. Methods & Procedures: Speeded auditory lexical decision was used to investigate response time and accuracy to pseudowords with a word‐initial or word‐final phonemic mismatch in 21 aphasic patients and in an age‐matched control group. Outcomes & Results: Results of an auditory lexical decision task showed that aphasic participants were less sensitive to phonemic mismatch if there was strong evidence for one particular lexical candidate, compared to the control group. Classifications of patients as Broca's vs Wernicke's or as fluent vs non‐fluent did not reveal differences in sensitivity to mismatch between aphasia types. There was no reliable relationship between measures of auditory verbal short‐term memory and lexical decision performance. Conclusions: It is argued that the aphasic results can best be viewed as lexical “overactivation” and that a verbal short‐term memory account is less appropriate.