Lexical Decision Test Research Articles

The Contribution of Vocabulary Knowledge to Summary Writing Quality: Vocabulary Size and Lexical Richness.

Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in writing. Previous research has examined the relationship between various aspects of vocabulary knowledge and independent writing performance and limited attention has been given to integrated writing such as summary writing. Our study investigated the contribution of two aspects of vocabulary knowledge (vocabulary size and lexical richness) to summary writing quality. In addition, we examined the extent to which lexical richness measures relate to summary writing quality among students who have smaller vocabulary sizes and students who have larger vocabulary sizes. We addressed these questions by administering a lexical decision test called the LexTALE and analyzing lexical richness and writing quality in the summary writing of 73 Arabic English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners of English. The results revealed a strong positive correlation between vocabulary size and summary writing quality, indicating that a larger vocabulary size is associated with higher-quality summaries. . However, most measures of lexical richness did not show a significant correlation with summary writing quality. Interestingly, the relationship between lexical richness measures and summary writing quality varied when learners were put in two groups with different vocabulary sizes.. Implications of the findings of the study for language teaching pedagogy and for research on the complex relationship between vocabulary knowledge and summary writing are discussed.

Disambiguating ambiguity: A comparative analysis of lexical decision-making in native and non-native English speakers

Making lexical decisions to disambiguate multiple-meaning words or senses provides clear evidence of word recognition, processing systems and representation in the mental lexicon. This comparative study explores non-native English speakers’ and native English speakers’ cognitive mechanisms employed in phonological and lexical ambiguity resolution embedded in auditory and visual utterances. English proficiency and vocabulary tests and two lexical decision tests were conducted with 35 EFL undergraduate students and four native English monolingual speakers. The effects of factors such as L2 proficiency and familiarity on ambiguity resolution in addition to the resolution techniques employed were also explored. Our findings suggest that the differences in disambiguating L2 words among native English speakers and non-native English speakers might indicate different comprehension, representation and processing patterns. The ambiguity type most likely has a major role in determining the diverse phenomenon of ambiguity resolution. More specifically, there was evidence of significant differences in homophone use, metaphorical polysemy and homonym ambiguity resolution between the two groups, excluding metonymous polysemy. Homophones and polysemy were the least problematic and challenging lexical ambiguity types unlike homonymy for the non-native group. Other results also revealed the positive effects of L2 proficiency and L2 word familiarity on ambiguity resolution. Thus, this study also has important implications considering the vital role of vocabulary in L2 competence and knowledge.

Decision times in orthographic processing: a cross-linguistic study

Reading comparisons across transparent and opaque orthographies indicate critical differences that may reveal the mechanisms involved in orthographic decoding across orthographies. Here, we address the role of criterion and speed of processing in accounting for performance differences across languages. We used binary tasks involving orthographic (words–pseudowords), and non-orthographic materials (female–male faces), and analyzed results based on Ratcliff’s Diffusion model. In the first study, 29 English and 28 Italian university students were given a lexical decision test. English observers made more errors than Italian observers while showing generally similar reaction times. In terms of the diffusion model, the two groups differed in the decision criterion: English observers used a lower criterion. There was no overall cross-linguistic difference in processing speed, but English observers showed lower values for words (and a smaller lexicality effect) than Italians. In the second study, participants were given a face gender judgment test. Female faces were identified slower than the male ones with no language group differences. In terms of the diffusion model, there was no difference between groups in drift rate and boundary separation. Overall, the new main finding concerns a difference in decision criterion limited to the orthographic task: English individuals showed a more lenient criterion in judging the lexicality of the items, a tendency that may explain why, despite lower accuracy, they were not slower. It is concluded that binary tasks (and the Diffusion model) can reveal cross-linguistic differences in orthographic processing which would otherwise be difficult to detect in standard single-word reading tasks.

Event-related potential and lexical decision task in dyslexic adults: Lexical and lateralization effects.

Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that presents cognitive and neurobiological impairments related to different patterns of brain activation throughout development, continuing in adulthood. Lexical decision tasks, together with electroencephalography (EEG) measures that have great temporal precision, allow the capture of cognitive processes during the task, and can assist in the understanding of altered brain activation processes in adult dyslexics. High-density EEG allows the use of temporal analyses through event-related potentials (ERPs). The aim of this study was to compare and measure the pattern of ERPs in adults with developmental dyslexia and good readers, and to characterize and compare reading patterns between groups. Twenty university adults diagnosed with developmental dyslexia and 23 healthy adult readers paired with dyslexics participated in the study. The groups were assessed in tests of intelligence, phonological awareness, reading, and writing, as well as through the lexical decision test (LDT). During LDT, ERPs were recorded using a 128-channel EEG device. The ERPs P100 occipital, N170 occipito-temporal, N400 centro-parietal, and LPC centro-parietal were analyzed. The results showed a different cognitive profile between the groups in the reading, phonological awareness, and writing tests but not in the intelligence test. In addition, the brain activation pattern of the ERPs was different between the groups in terms of hemispheric lateralization, with higher amplitude of N170 in the dyslexia group in the right hemisphere and opposite pattern in the control group and specificities in relation to the items of the LDT, as the N400 were more negative in the Dyslexia group for words, while in the control group, this ERP was more pronounced in the pseudowords. These results are important for understanding different brain patterns in developmental dyslexia and can better guide future interventions according to the changes found in the profile.

The Divergent Nature of Language Performance and Social Use of Language: An Online Scale for the Assessment of Language in Adults Using Self-reported Skills (ALASS)

The Assessment of Language in Adults using Self-reported Skills (ALASS) is an online tool aimed at providing a rapid indication of language-related skills at two levels: basic performance and social use. In Study 1, we have developed and validated a new tool with two objective measures: a lexical decision test and a grammaticality judgement test, completed online by 280 participants (204 women, 69 men, 7 undisclosed, age: M = 24.4 years; SD = 11.1). Results show that ALASS is a good predictor of the outcomes for reaction times in the objective measures. In study 2, we have run further analyses with a subset of 209 adults (157 women, 47 men, 5 undisclosed; age: M = 20.9 years; SD = 5.8) to validate the social implications of ALASS with another online study, also showing a considerable explanatory power in this case, and strengthening the divergent nature of language when it is used with a social purpose against a more cognitive function (i.e. literacy and language production and comprehension). Considering its explanatory power for lexical performance, we believe that the scale has a potential applicability in the assessment of adults that could have missed a diagnosis of Developmental Language Disorder during childhood.

The Contribution of Radical Knowledge and Character Recognition to L2 Chinese Reading Comprehension.

Although there have been extensive theoretical discussions on the various component skills needed in comprehending texts in L2 English and L1 Chinese, empirical investigations on the component skills of L2 Chinese are scarce. This study attempts to fill in this gap by investigating the direct and indirect contributions of two lower-level latent component skills, radical knowledge and character recognition, to L2 Chinese passage-level reading comprehension. Radical knowledge was measured by a Receptive Semantic Radical Knowledge Test and a Semantic Radical Meaning Matching Test. Character recognition was assessed by a Lexical Decision Test and a Character Knowledge Test. Two tests, a Multiple-choice Test and a Cloze Test, were adopted to measure textual reading comprehension. The data were collected from 209 learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). Radical knowledge was found to have a significant direct effect on character recognition and significant indirect effect on L2 Chinese reading through the mediation of character recognition. Character recognition was found to have a significant direct effect on reading comprehension. Taken together, this study suggests the importance of lower-level character and sub-character component skills to L2 Chinese reading.

Description and analysis of a Portuguese blend corpus

Multi-word formation processes in Portuguese comprise root-compounding (e.g., toxicodependente ‘drug addict’, agridoce ‘sour sweet’), word-compounding (e.g., barco-casa ‘houseboat’, guarda-roupa ‘wardrobe’, cantora-atriz ‘singer/actress’), and blending (e.g., cartomente ‘lying fortune teller’ < cartomante ‘fortune teller’ + mente ‘he/she lies’, tristemunho ‘sad testimony’ < triste ‘sad’ + testemunho ‘testimony’, cantautor ‘singer and composer’ < cantor singer + autor ‘composer’). Compound structures have been quite thoroughly described by several authors (e.g., Villalva & Gonçalves 2015), whereas blending has garnered some controversial and even contradictory analyses. Some authors claim that blends and compounds have similar structures, while others consider that they have completely different structures (e.g., Gries 2004b, Minussi & Nóbrega 2014). This paper focuses on the description and analysis of an annotated corpus of Portuguese blends, and on the presentation of experimental evidence that aims to assess the knowledge of these words by native young adult European and Brazilian Portuguese speakers.The first section is devoted to the presentation of Portuguese blends, namely regarding the status of their constituents and their linear relationships, grammatical structure, and the phonetic/prosodic relationship that holds between the blends and their base words. The second section focuses on the description of the Portuguese blend corpus. Although new coinages make this a never-ending work in progress, it is presently formed by (circa) 300 blends, collected in a variety of sources, from literary texts to political and social commenting, advertising, or even individual ad hoc instances. The information gathered in the corpus comprehends all the features considered in the analysis of the blends, presented in section 1, and it also provides data on attestation and frequency. The third section presents an analysis of a sub-corpus (184 forms), related to their linear structure, grammatical and prosodic relationships, and a cross-analysis that suggests that there is a strong link between headedness and cliphood. Finally, the fourth section offers a brief presentation of experimental work that suggests that clips facilitate the processing of blends, since the clipped word is more frequently used in replies to a familiarity test, and the same happens with reaction time values obtained in a lexical decision test.

Asymmetries in Perceptual Adjustments to Non-Canonical Pronunciations

This paper examines two plausible mechanisms supporting sound category adaptation: directional shifts towards the novel pronunciation or a general category relaxation of criteria. Focusing on asymmetries in adaptation to the voicing patterns of English coronal fricatives, we suggest that typology or synchronic experience affect adaptation. A corpus study of coronal fricative substitution patterns confirmed that North American English listeners are more likely to be exposed to devoiced /z/ than voiced /s/. Across two perceptual adaptation experiments, listeners in test conditions heard naturally produced devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/ in critical items within sentences, while control listeners were exposed to identical sentences with canonical pronunciations. Perceptual adaptation was tested via a lexical decision test, with devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/, as well as a novel alveopalatalized pronunciation, to determine whether adaptation was targeted in the direction of the exposed variant or reflected a more general relaxation. Results indicate there was directional and word-specific adaptation for /z/-devoicing with no evidence for generalization. Conversely, there was evidence of /s/-voicing generalizing and eliciting general category relaxation. These results underscore the role of perceptual experiences, and support an evaluation stage in perceptual learning, where listeners assess whether to update a representation.

Orthographic and Morphological Masked Priming Effects in Arabic: Evidence from Lexical Decision Task in Children with and Without Dyslexia

In this study, we conducted a lexical decision test using masked priming paradigm to examine the morphological and orthographic priming effects in word recognition. Morphologically related word pairs can be derivational, sharing the same root or not (pseudo derivational). However, the orthographically related pairs share the same letters in different positions. Two groups of native Arabic-speaking children (N = 57) from grade 4 and 5 participated in this study: typical readers (n = 39) and dyslexic readers (n = 18). To examine whether a potential morphological priming effect is driven by semantic or orthographic properties of shared morphemes, we compared prime-target pairs with derivation morphology and pseudo-derivation word related pairs. Between groups comparisons showed that a priming effect occurred only in typical readers. Comparisons between conditions revealed that a priming effect only occurred for accuracy in derivational morphology. No priming effect occurred in reaction times (RTs) between groups or conditions. These results provide evidence for root-based word recognition in Arabic children and give support to semantically rather than orthographically driven lexical access.

Spot-the-Word Test como instrumento neuropsicológico para avaliação de inteligência pré-mórbida em idosos:revisão da literatura

Objetivo: Esta revisão teve o objetivo de investigar estudos publicados na literatura sobre a utilização do teste Spot-the- Word (STW), um instrumento neuropsicológico que avalia a inteligência pré-mórbida, em pacientes idosos. Método: Os estudos selecionados para esta revisão pertencemàs classes de evidencia I e II, ou seja, estudos com grupos controles e grupos não controlados. Foram excluídos estudos Classe III ou relatos de caso.Resultados: Estudos com idosos e pacientes com Alzheimer em fase leve mostraram correlação positiva do STW com outras medidas que avaliam a inteligência pré-mórbida. Conclusão: Pelo fato de ser um teste de decisão lexical com ênfase na inteligência cristalizada e menos suscetível a alteraçõesdecorrentes da idade, o STW é utilizado como teste de inteligência pré-mórbida em idosos.

Lexical-Access Ability and Cognitive Predictors of Speech Recognition in Noise in Adult Cochlear Implant Users.

Not all of the variance in speech-recognition performance of cochlear implant (CI) users can be explained by biographic and auditory factors. In normal-hearing listeners, linguistic and cognitive factors determine most of speech-in-noise performance. The current study explored specifically the influence of visually measured lexical-access ability compared with other cognitive factors on speech recognition of 24 postlingually deafened CI users. Speech-recognition performance was measured with monosyllables in quiet (consonant-vowel-consonant [CVC]), sentences-in-noise (SIN), and digit-triplets in noise (DIN). In addition to a composite variable of lexical-access ability (LA), measured with a lexical-decision test (LDT) and word-naming task, vocabulary size, working-memory capacity (Reading Span test [RSpan]), and a visual analogue of the SIN test (text reception threshold test) were measured. The DIN test was used to correct for auditory factors in SIN thresholds by taking the difference between SIN and DIN: SRTdiff. Correlation analyses revealed that duration of hearing loss (dHL) was related to SIN thresholds. Better working-memory capacity was related to SIN and SRTdiff scores. LDT reaction time was positively correlated with SRTdiff scores. No significant relationships were found for CVC or DIN scores with the predictor variables. Regression analyses showed that together with dHL, RSpan explained 55% of the variance in SIN thresholds. When controlling for auditory performance, LA, LDT, and RSpan separately explained, together with dHL, respectively 37%, 36%, and 46% of the variance in SRTdiff outcome. The results suggest that poor verbal working-memory capacity and to a lesser extent poor lexical-access ability limit speech-recognition ability in listeners with a CI.

Semantic word category processing in semantic dementia and posterior cortical atrophy

There is general agreement that perisylvian language cortex plays a major role in lexical and semantic processing; but the contribution of additional, more widespread, brain areas in the processing of different semantic word categories remains controversial. We investigated word processing in two groups of patients whose neurodegenerative diseases preferentially affect specific parts of the brain, to determine whether their performance would vary as a function of semantic categories proposed to recruit those brain regions. Cohorts with (i) Semantic Dementia (SD), who have anterior temporal-lobe atrophy, and (ii) Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA), who have predominantly parieto-occipital atrophy, performed a lexical decision test on words from five different lexico-semantic categories: colour (e.g., yellow), form (oval), number (seven), spatial prepositions (under) and function words (also). Sets of pseudo-word foils matched the target words in length and bi-/tri-gram frequency. Word-frequency was matched between the two visual word categories (colour and form) and across the three other categories (number, prepositions, and function words). Age-matched healthy individuals served as controls. Although broad word processing deficits were apparent in both patient groups, the deficit was strongest for colour words in SD and for spatial prepositions in PCA. The patterns of performance on the lexical decision task demonstrate (a) general lexicosemantic processing deficits in both groups, though more prominent in SD than in PCA, and (b) differential involvement of anterior-temporal and posterior-parietal cortex in the processing of specific semantic categories of words.

Salivary testosterone levels are unrelated to handedness or cerebral lateralization for language

ABSTRACTBehavioural and cerebral lateralization are thought to be controlled, at least in part, by prenatal testosterone (T) levels, explaining why sex differences are found in both laterality traits. The present study investigated hormonal effects on laterality using adult salivary T levels, to explore the adequacy of competing theories: the Geschwind, Behan and Galaburda, the callosal, and the sexual differentiation hypotheses. Sixty participants (15 right-handers and 15 left-handers of each sex) participated. Behavioural lateralization was studied by means of hand preference tests (i.e., the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory and the Quantification of Hand Preference test) and a hand skill test (i.e., the Peg-Moving test) whereas cerebral lateralization for language was studied using the Consonant-Vowel Dichotic Listening test and the Visual Half-Field Lexical Decision test. Salivary T and cortisol (C) concentrations were measured by luminescence immunoassay. Canonical correlations did not reveal significant relationships between T levels and measures of hand preference, hand skill, or language laterality. Thus, our findings add to the growing literature showing no relationship between T concentrations with behavioural or cerebral lateralization. It is claimed that prenatal T is not a major determinant of individual variability in either behavioural or cerebral lateralization.

The influence of lexical-access ability and vocabulary knowledge on measures of speech recognition in noise

Objective: The main objective was to investigate the effect of linguistic abilities (lexical-access ability and vocabulary size) on different measures of speech-in-noise recognition in normal-hearing listeners with various levels of language proficiency. Design: Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured for sentences in steady-state (SRTstat) and fluctuating noise (SRTfluc), and for digit-triplets in steady-state noise (DIN). Lexical-access ability was measured with a lexical-decision test and a word-naming test. Vocabulary size was also measured. For the SRT, keyword scoring and sentence scoring were compared. Study sample: To introduce variation in linguistic abilities, three groups of 24 young normal-hearing listeners were included: higher-educated native, lower-educated native, and higher-educated non-native listeners. Results: Lexical-access ability was most accurately measured with combined results of lexical decision and word naming. Lexical-access ability explained 60% of the variance in SRT. The effect of linguistic abilities on SRTs was up to 5.6 dB for SRTstat and 8 dB for SRTfluc. Using keyword scoring reduced this effect by approximately 1.5 dB. For DIN the effect of linguistic ability was less than 1 dB. Conclusions: Lexical-access ability is an important predictor of SRTs in normal-hearing listeners. These results are important to consider in the interpretation of speech-in-noise scores of hearing-impaired listeners.

Performance of a sample of patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and healthy elderly on a lexical decision test (LDT) as a measure of pre-morbid intelligence.

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to describe the performance of healthy elderly patients with aging-related pathologies (MCI) and patients with AD on a lexical decision test.MethodsThe study included 38 healthy elderly subjects, 61 MCI and 26 AD patients from the Neurology Department of the Hospital das Clinicas, Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Group. The neuropsychological instruments included the episodic memory test (RAVLT), subtests from the WAIS-III (Matrix Reasoning and Vocabulary) to determine estimated IQ, the Boston naming test (BNT) and Lexical Decision Test (LDT).ResultsAll groups differed on the MMSE, as expected according to their pathologies, memory tests, naming and estimated IQ. For the vocabulary and the LDT – measures of crystalized intelligence no differences were found.ConclusionThe LDT demonstrated that lexical decision can be used as a measure of pre-morbid IQ among the individuals assessed in a Brazilian sample.

Retrieval intention modulates the effects of directed forgetting instructions on recollection.

The neurocognitive basis of memory retrieval is often examined by investigating brain potential old/new effects, which are differences in brain activity between successfully remembered repeated stimuli and correctly rejected new stimuli in a recognition test. In this study, we combined analyses of old/new effects for words with an item-method directed-forgetting manipulation in order to isolate differences between the retrieval processes elicited by words that participants were initially instructed to commit to memory and those that participants were initially instructed to forget. We compared old/new effects elicited by to-be-forgotten (TBF) words with those elicited by to-be-remembered (TBR) words in both an explicit-memory test (a recognition test) and an implicit-memory test (a lexical-decision test). Behavioral results showed clear directed forgetting effects in the recognition test, but not in the lexical decision test. Mirroring the behavioral findings, analyses of brain potentials showed evidence of directed forgetting only in the recognition test. In this test, potentials from 450–650 ms (P600 old/new effects) were more positive for TBR relative to TBF words. By contrast, P600 effects evident during the lexical-decision test did not differ in magnitude between TBR and TBF items. When taken in the context of prior studies that have linked similar parietal old/new effects to the recollection of episodic information, these data suggest that directed-forgetting effects manifest primarily in greater episodic retrieval by TBR than TBF items, and that retrieval intention may be important for these directed-forgetting effects to occur.

Priming of verb inflections in L1 and L2 French: A comparison of `redundant' versus `non-redundant' training conditions

Abstract There have been several calls to adopt more implicit techniques for investigating how input is processed by second language (L2) learners. This study tested for aural repetition priming using a lexical decision test to establish whether a French verb inflection (-ons) can be primed amongst beginner classroom learners of L2 French during activities that broadly reflected two types of aural instructional activities. Fifty one school learners of French were randomly assigned either to an exposure activity which directed their attention to the target inflection or to an activity in which they were asked to try to understand sentences which contained the target inflection. The input was designed to simulate learning situations in which learners find aural comprehension effortful. All participants then did a lexical decision test, to measure the activation of representations of the French verb inflection during the exposure conditions. The results from this preliminary study indicated that greater priming effects followed the instructional activity that focused attention on the inflection than the activity that focused attention on sentence meaning. This is compatible with acoustic word priming research that suggests an orientation to meaning inhibits priming for some learners, and also with pedagogical research that suggests that focusing learners' attention to some features of the input is helpful. Our findings in the aural domain seem to run counter to recent research suggesting that regardless of the orientation of attention during training, orthographic representations of suffixes can be primed during visual word recognition. Future applications of this technique for investigating the allocation of attention in L2 input processing are discussed.

High Reward Makes Items Easier to Remember, but Harder to Bind to a New Temporal Context

Learning through reward is central to adaptive behavior. Indeed, items are remembered better if they are experienced while participants expect a reward, and people can deliberately prioritize memory for high- over low-valued items. Do memory advantages for high-valued items only emerge after deliberate prioritization in encoding? Or, do reward-based memory enhancements also apply to unrewarded memory tests and to implicit memory? First, we tested for a high-value memory advantage in unrewarded implicit- and explicit-tests (Experiment 1). Participants first learned high or low-reward values of 36 words, followed by unrewarded lexical decision and free-recall tests. High-value words were judged faster in lexical decision, and more often recalled in free recall. These two memory advantages for high-value words were negatively correlated suggesting at least two mechanisms by which reward value can influence later item-memorability. The ease with which the values were originally acquired explained the negative correlation: people who learned values earlier showed reward effects in implicit memory whereas people who learned values later showed reward effects in explicit memory. We then asked whether a high-value advantage would persist if trained items were linked to a new context (Experiments 2a and 2b). Following the same value training as in Experiment 1, participants learned lists composed of previously trained words mixed with new words, each followed by free recall. Thus, participants had to retrieve words only from the most recent list, irrespective of their values. High- and low-value words were recalled equally, but low-value words were recalled earlier than high-value words and high-value words were more often intruded (proactive interference). Thus, the high-value advantage holds for implicit- and explicit-memory, but comes with a side effect: High-value items are more difficult to relearn in a new context. Similar to emotional arousal, reward value can both enhance and impair memory.

Effects of morphological Family Size for young readers

Dutch children, from the second and fourth grade of primary school, were each given a visual lexical decision test on 210 Dutch monomorphemic words. After removing words not recognized by a majority of the younger group, (lexical) decisions were analysed by mixed-model regression methods to see whether morphological Family Size influenced decision times over and above several other covariates. The effect of morphological Family Size on decision time was mixed: larger families led to significantly faster decision times for the second graders but not for the fourth graders. Since facilitative effects on decision times had been found for adults, we offer a developmental account to explain the absence of an effect of Family Size on decision times for fourth graders.

When does less yield more? The impact of severity upon implicit recognition in pure alexia

Pure alexia (PA) is characterised by strong effects of word length on reading times and is sometimes accompanied by an overt letter-by-letter (LBL) reading strategy. Past studies have reported “implicit recognition” in some individual PA patients. This is a striking finding because such patients are able to perform semantic classification and lexical decision at above chance levels even when the exposure duration is short enough to prevent explicit identification. In an attempt to determine the prevalence of this “implicit recognition” effect, we assessed semantic categorisation and lexical decision performance using limited exposure durations in 10 PA cases. The majority of the patients showed above chance accuracy in semantic categorisation and lexical decision. Performance on the lexical decision test was influenced by frequency and imageability. In addition, we found that the extent to which patients showed evidence of “implicit recognition” in both tasks was inversely related to the severity of their reading disorder. This result is consistent with hypotheses which suggest that this effect does not constitute an implicit form of unique word identification but is a reflection of the degree of partial activation within the word recognition system. These results also go some way towards explaining the individual variation in the presence of this effect observed across previous case-study investigations in the literature.