Judgments Of Words Research Articles

Effects of modality on subjective estimates of frequency and recency of spoken and printed words

Previous research (Pisoni and Garber, 1990; Garber and Pisoni, 1991) has demonstrated that subjective familiarity judgments for words are not differentially affected by the modality (visual or auditory) in which the words are presented, suggesting that subjects base their judgments on fairly abstract, modality‐independent representations in memory. However, in a recent large scale study in Japanese (Amano et al., in press), markedly modality effects on familiarity ratings were observed. The current research further examines possible modality differences in subjective ratings and their implications for word recognition. Specially selected words were presented to subjects for frequency and recency judgments. In particular, subjects were asked how frequently (or recently) they READ, WROTE, HEARD, or SAID a given spoken or printed word. These ratings were then used to predict accuracy and processing times in auditory and visual lexical decision and naming tasks. Our results suggest modality dependence for some lexical representations, primarily for words that occur fairly rarely in the language. [Work supported by NIDCD.]

Context Effects on Similarity Judgments of Multidimensional Stimuli: Inferring the Structure of the Emotion Space

Four experiments were conducted to assess the effects of stimulus context on similarity judgments of emotion words. In each experiment, the context either uniformly represented locations on Russell′s (1980) two-dimensional circumplex emotion space or emphasized emotions lying within particular quadrants of that space. The manipulation of context led to systematic changes in the similarity relations among the emotion words. Multidimensional scaling of the similarity data modeled these changes in terms of an emerging third dimension that teased apart distinctions among the emotion words added in each context. Contextual effects were strongest when similarities were assessed via a sorting task and were greatly attenuated when similarities were assessed via direct pairwise ratings of similarity. The contextual dependence of similarity measures provides one possible explanation for reported discrepancies in the dimensionality of the emotion space.

Audiovisual integration in perception of real words.

Three experiments follow up on Easton and Basala's (1982) report that the "McGurk effect" (an influence of a visibly mouthed utterance on a dubbed acoustic one) does not occur when utterances are real words rather than nonsense syllables. In contrast, with real-word stimuli, Easton and Basala report a strong reverse effect whereby a dubbed soundtrack strongly affects identification of lipread words. In Experiment 1, we showed that a strong McGurk effect does obtain when dubbed real words are discrepant with observed words in consonantal place of articulation. A second experiment obtained only a weak reverse effect of dubbed words on judgments of lipread words. A final experiment was designed to provide a sensitive test of effects of lipread words on judgments of heard words and of heard words on judgments of lipread words. The findings reinforced those of the first two experiments that both effects occur, but, with place-of-articulation information discrepant across the modalities, the McGurk effect is strong and the reverse effect weak.

On the relation between feeling of knowing and lexical decision: persistent subthreshold activation or topic familiarity?

Experiment 1 replicated Yaniv and Meyer's (1987) finding that lexical decision and episodic recognition performance was better for words previously yielding high-accessibility levels (a combination of feeling-of-knowing and tip-of-the-tongue ratings) in comparison with those yielding low-accessibility levels in a rare word definition task. Experiment 2 yielded the same pattern even though lexical decisions preceded accessibility estimates by a full week. Experiment 3 dismissed the possibility that the Experiment 2 results may have been due to a long-term influence from the lexical decision task to the rare word judgment task. These results support a model in which Ss (a) retrieve topic familiarity information in making accessibility estimates in the rare word definition task and (b) use this information to modulate lexical decision performance.

Subcategorical phonetic mismatches and lexical access

The place of phonetic analysis in the perception of words is unclear. While some theories assume fully specified phonemic strings as input, other theories assume that little analysis occurs. An earlier experiment by Streeter and Nigro (1979) produced evidence, based on auditorily presented words with misleading acoustic cues, that lexical decisions were based on mostly unanalyzed patterns, since word judgments were delayed by misleading information whereas nonword judgments were not. The present studies expand that work to a different set of cues, and to cases in which the overriding cue came first. An additional task, auditory naming, was used to examine the effects when the decision stage is less demanding. For the lexical decision task, misleading information slowed the responses, for both words and nonwords. In the auditory naming task, only the slower responses were affected. These results suggest that phonetic conflicts are resolved prior to lexical access.

The Nature of the Subject: "Judgment" and the Law of Specification in Kant's "Critique of Judgment"

KANT'S Critique of Judgment is not about objects?beautiful or other wise?but about the judging subject. I would like to make two points about the reflexive relation between nature and the subject ?that is, the judging subject?based on paragraphs six and seven of Section V from the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment. The first point concerns Kant's use of the term Urteil, or and related terms. The sec ond point concerns the law of specification, and what Kant calls the gl?ck licher Zufall, or fortunate coincidence, between nature and the subject. One way to investigate the relation between nature and the subject is to look closely at the term since judgment is the activity that brings nature and the subject together. As someone from one of the philo logical disciplines, I tend to answer the question, What is judgment? by asking, What does the word 'judgment' mean? ?more precisely, what might we learn by examining the German word Urteilskraft? I'm not suggesting that German words have a mystical quality that makes Kant's meaning clear to anyone who reads the German original. But there does seem to me to be a danger in the increasingly common practice of reading texts only in translation, or in summaries of translations. The word Urteilskraft, or judgment, is itself very important. It marks the transition between Kant's first two Critiques of the human faculties, namely the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason, and the third Critique, that of Judgment. It is important to understand all we can about the difference between reason and judgment ?beginning with the words themselves. The philological inquiry that follows examines how Kant's words are bound up with Kant's argument; and for such a project, we must briefly return to the German. The word Urteil has the same legal connotations as the English word judgment; and I am not the first to remark that an entire juridical vocabulary is here employed by Kant: words like law, domain,

Rhyming and the right hemisphere

Subjects determined whether two successively presented and orthographically different words rhymed with each other. The first word was presented at fixation and the second was presented either to the left or to the right of fixation, either alone (unilateral presentation) or accompanied by a distractor word in the other visual hemifield (bilateral presentation). Subjects were more accurate when the words did not rhyme, when presentation was unilateral, and when the target was flashed to the right visual hemifield. It was predicted that bilateral presentation would produce interference when information from both visual fields was processed by one hemisphere (callosal relay), but not when each of the two hemispheres performed a task independently (direct access). That is, callosal relay tasks should show greater laterality effects with bilateral presentations, whereas direct access tasks should show similar laterality effects with both bilateral and unilateral presentations. Greater laterality effects were observed for bilaterally presented rhyming words, but nonrhyming words showed similar laterality effects for both bilateral and unilateral presentations. These results suggest that judgment of nonrhyming words can be performed by either hemisphere, but that judgment of rhyming words requires callosal relay to the left hemisphere. The absence of a visual field difference with nonrhyming word pairs suggests further that judgment of non-rhyming word pairs may be accomplished by the right hemisphere when presentation is to the left visual field.

The Relationship Between Phoneme Discrimination, Speech Production, and Language Comprehension in Cerebral-Palsied Individuals

Twenty-four individuals with impaired speech (anarthria or dysarthria) were compared on tests of receptive language to a control group with normal speech. All subjects were cerebral-palsied and groups were matched on age and nonverbal ability. The speech-impaired subjects performed less well than controls on a phoneme discrimination task in which they were required to judge whether pairs of nonwords were the same or different. They were also impaired relative to controls on a receptive vocabulary test, but not in understanding of grammatical structure. One year later, phoneme discrimination skills were reassessed in this sample, using another same-different task, plus a new task in which subjects were required to judge if the name of a picture was spoken correctly or altered by one sound. Speech-impaired subjects performed as well as controls on the word judgment task, indicating that they can discriminate phoneme contrasts adequately. However, the same-different task again resulted in highly significant differences between speech-impaired and control groups. It is concluded that poor performance on the same-different task reflects weak memory for novel phonological strings, rather than impaired phoneme perception. It is proposed that retention of unfamiliar words is facilitated by overt or covert repetition, so individuals who cannot speak fluently have difficulty remembering nonwords. This explanation can account both for the poor performance of speech-impaired subjects on the same-different task, and for their selective deficit in vocabulary acquisition.

Speech changes in a postlingually deafened girl using a multichannel cochlear implant

The speech of a postlingually deafened girl previously implanted with a single electrode implant was spectrographically analyzed from recordings taken on six separate occasions; on three occasions after her single electrode implant failed (4 days post, 5 days post, 18 days post) and on three occasions after stimulation of the Nucleus multichannel implant (1 day post, 6 months post, 9 months post). Changes in acoustic measurements of vowel formants, vowel duration, voicing, manner of articulation, and place of articulation cues are discussed. Listener judgments of target words are presented. The present findings are related to previous case studies of speech changes with a multichannel cochlear implant [Tartter et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 86, 2113–2121 (1989)] and single electrode stimulation [Leder et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 79, 1967–1974 (1986)].

Electrophysiological manifestations of typicality judgment

Ten male subjects participated in an event-related potential study of typicality judgment of words that were of either high or low frequency of usage. The amplitude of a negative wave with an average peak latency of 490 msec (N400) correlated with the goodness-of-fit of a word to a particular category independent of frequency, with poor examples of the category evoking a significantly more negative waveform. The relative insensitivity of the N400 to word frequency suggests that the N400 reflects some postlexical evaluation rather than lexical access.

Evidence for auditory temporal distinctiveness: Modality effects in order and frequency judgments.

Two new, long-lasting phenomena involving modality of stimulus presentation are documented. In one series of experiments we investigated effects of modality of presentation on order judgments. Order judgments for auditory words were more accurate than order judgments for visual words at both the beginning and the end of lists, and the auditory advantage increased with the temporal separation of the successive items. A second series of experiments investigated effects of modality on estimates of presentation frequency. Frequency estimates of repeated auditory words exceeded frequency estimates of repeated visual words. The auditory advantage increased with frequency of presentation, and this advantage was not affected by the retention interval. These various effects were taken as support for a temporal coding assumption, that auditory presentation produces a more accurate encoding of time of presentation than does visual presentation.

Evidence for auditory temporal distinctiveness: modality effects in order and frequency judgments.

Two new, long-lasting phenomena involving modality of stimulus presentation are documented. In one series of experiments we investigated effects of modality of presentation on order judgments. Order judgments for auditory words were more accurate than order judgments for visual words at both the beginning and the end of lists, and the auditory advantage increased with the temporal separation of the successive items. A second series of experiments investigated effects of modality on estimates of presentation frequency. Frequency estimates of repeated auditory words exceeded frequency estimates of repeated visual words. The auditory advantage increased with frequency of presentation, and this advantage was not affected by the retention interval. These various effects were taken as support for a temporal coding assumption, that auditory presentation produces a more accurate encoding of time of presentation than does visual presentation.

Adult age differences in implicit and explicit memory: Time course and encoding effects.

Young and older adults were tested at three delays on word-stem completion or cued recall following semantic or structural word judgments. Identical three-letter stems were present at retrieval for both implicit (completion) and explicit (cued recall) tasks; only the intention to recall list words differed. The young adults outperformed the older adults on both implicit and explicit tasks at all test delays. Under some conditions, the older but not the young adults performed more poorly on cued recall than on stem completion, suggesting a possible failure to use implicitly available information to support explicit remembering. These results suggest that some forms of implicit memory decline with normal aging.

Impairment of Rhyme Judgments by Silent and Overt Articulatory Suppression

Two experiments showed that articulating “blah” repeatedly aloud or silently interfered with the speed and accuracy of judging whether pairs of words rhymed. Articulation from another voice affected only accuracy, and foot tapping had no effect. This suggests that it is mainly the articulatory component of articulatory suppression that interferes with this task and that rhyme judgments of words depend on an articulatory code or an acoustic code accessed via articulation. A third experiment confirmed these effects on speed of judgment, but there were no significant effects on errors in this experiment. Non-verbal use of the articulatory musculature in chewing also slowed performance. Similar results were obtained for word and non-word rhyme judgments, though the latter effects were somewhat weaker. It is argued that the results fail to support the theory that there are different methods of accessing phonology for words or non-words and indicate that access to phonology was via articulation, rather than a means to achieving articulation. If the task incorporated mechanisms employed in normal reading, the results refute suggestions that conversion of print to sound, whether for words or non-words, occurs prior to retrieval of an articulatory code.

Knowing and liking

The distinction between knowledge and affect has received two opposing interpretations. One point of view asserts that the two kinds of judgments involve two distinct, qualitatively different systems, and that affective, preference judgments are “immediately” accessible, without mediating cognitive processes. Our position states, in contrast, that knowing and liking are based on different aspects of the same underlying representation, and that evaluative judgments require more complex processing than do descriptive or recognition judgments. Two experiments explored the relative speed of these two kinds of judgments. In the first, liking judgments for words were compared with lexical decision judgments; in the second, a range of paintings was judged for liking and for prior encounters. In both cases, descriptive and recognition judgments occurred more speedily than did the evaluative judgments, and this difference held when the two judgments were matched on discriminability. However, it was noted that if consciousness is viewed as constructive, the phenomenal priority of evaluation may be independent of accessibility and unity of the underlying representation of an event.

Can automatic picture processing influence word judgments?

Two experiments were undertaken in order to evaluate the influence of automatic semantic processing of pictures on word judgments. In both studies, picture-word analogs of the Stroop task were employed. In Experiment 1, subjects were required to make a semantic category judgment about the word; in Experiment 2, they were simply to respond yes or no to whether the word was DOG. Taken together, the results of these experiments indicated that (a) perceptual factors such as lateral masking influence responding in these types of tasks and their contributions must be partialed out from the effects of semantic factors, (b) picture processing can facilitate word processing but only in a restricted set of circumstances, and (c) background pictures incompatible with the correct response can interfere with word judgments. The facilitation observed was attributed to the effects automatic picture processing has on an initial input process, while the interference appears to arise at a response selection and execution stage. Further, the results suggest that the semantic nature of automatic picture processing is at least somewhat different from that of automatic word processing.

Can automatic picture processing influence word judgments?

Can automatic picture processing influence word judgments?

An auditory Stroop effect with judgements of speaker gender.

A series of “auditory Stroop” experiments is described. These demonstrate an effect of stimulus words presented on speed of judgments of speaker gender and, conversely, an influence of speaker gender on judgments of words presented. In an experiment in which responses to speaker gender were semantically related to, but not identical with, stimulus words, the auditory Stroop effect was attenuated but remained in evidence. Potential parallels between this auditory paradigm and the visual Stroop color/word effect are explored, and it is suggested that the Stroop effects in the two modalities operate along broadly similar lines. The search for a common causal mechanism would therefore be justified.

Encoding Task and Trace Specificity with Respect to Sensory, Semantic, and Contextual Recall Cues

Summary This study examines the effects of a word judgment task that can be performed at either the semantic or sensory level on the subsequent effectiveness of sensory, semantic, and contextual recall cues. Four experiments are reported, each contrasting the effectiveness of two cue types in university undergradutes (respective ns = 86, 96, 96, 96). The data are analyzed using both traditional and reduction method analyses. In general, the results suggest that all three types of cues are more effective following a semantic versus a sensory level task. Both traditional and reduction method analyses show a decrease in trace specificity with respect to the types of cues studied when Ss switch from a sensory to a semantic level task. Implications for current theories of cued recall are discussed.

Measuring lexical access during sentence processing.

The results from “on-line” investigations of sentence comprehension are often difficult to interpret since it is not always apparent what component processes are reflected in the response measure. The results of two experiments reported here indicate that response latencies from phoneme-triggered lexical decision (PTLD) reflect the time needed for lexical access during sentence processing. Listeners were presented with sentences and were asked to make a word/nonword judgment for items beginning with a particular word-initial target phoneme. Speed of lexical access was manipulated by varying the semantic predictability of the target-bearing word. WORD judgments were faster for words that were preceded by semantically related verbs than were WORD judgments for words that were preceded by neutral verbs. The present results are consistent with other studies showing semantic facilitation of lexical access during the processing of fluent speech. It is argued that the phoneme-triggered lexical-decision task is a more suitable measure of lexical access during sentence processing than phoneme monitoring (Foss, 1969) or word monitoring (Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 19751. In addition, it is pointed out that the phoneme-triggered lexical-decision task lends itself to modifications which should enable investigators to study various aspects of on-line sentence processing.