Lexical Decision Research Articles

Very early and late form-to-meaning computations during visual word recognition as revealed by electrophysiology.

We used a large-scale data-driven approach to investigate the role of word form in accessing semantics. By using distributional semantic methods and taking advantage of an ERP lexical decision mega-study, we investigated the exact time dynamic of semantic access from printed words as driven by orthography-semantics consistency (OSC) and phonology-semantics consistency (PSC). Generalized Additive Models revealed very early and late OSC-by-PSC interactions, visible at 100 and 400msec, respectively. This pattern suggests that, during visual word recognition: a) meaning is accessed by means of two distinct and interactive paths - the orthography-to-meaning and the orthography-to-phonology-to-meaning path -, which mutually contribute to recognition since early stages; b) the system may exploit a dual mechanism for semantic access, with early and late effects associated to a fast-coarse and a slow-fine grained semantic analysis, respectively. The results also highlight the high sensitivity of the visual word recognition system to arbitrary form-meaning relations.

Involvement of the sensorimotor system in less advanced L2 processing: Evidence from a semantic category decision task.

There is increasing evidence indicating that the sensorimotor system is involved in advanced L2 processing, which raises the question of what role sensorimotor information plays in the course of less advanced L2 comprehension. In the current study, two experiments were conducted using a lexical decision task (LDT) and semantic category task (SCT). The results showed that, in the LDT, a task more likely to result in participants making judgments based on the physical properties of words (e.g., familiarity, orthography), "up" words (e.g., sun, plane) did not result in faster upward than downward responses, and "down" words (e.g., tunnel, cave) also did not result in faster downward than upward responses. In the SCT, compatibility effects were found; specifically, searching for the up target after "up" words was faster than after "down" words and searching for the bottom target after "down" words was faster than after "upward-pointing" words. Hence, we concluded that L2 sensorimotor association, at least for L2 with low proficiency, not automatic in nature and is dependent upon deeper semantic task demands.

The Chinese Lexicon Project II: A megastudy of speeded naming performance for 25,000+ traditional Chinese two-character words.

Using a megastudy approach, (Tse et al.,2017Behavior Research Methods, 49,1503-1519)established a large-scale repository of lexical variables and lexical decision responses for more than 25,000 traditional Chinese two-character words. In the current study, we expand their database by collecting norms for speeded naming reaction times (RTs) and accuracy rates, and compiling more lexical variables (e.g., phonological consistency and semantic neighborhood size). Following Tse et al.'s procedure, about 33 college-aged native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong read aloud each word. We conducted item-level regression analyses to test the relative predictive power of orthographic variables (e.g., stroke count), phonological variables (e.g., phonological consistency), and semantic variables (e.g., semantic transparency) in naming performance. We also compared the effects of lexical variables on naming performance and Tse et al.'s lexical decision performance to examine the extent to which effects are task-specific or task-general. Freely accessible to the research community, this resource provides a valuable addition to other influential mega-databases, such as the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2004Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 283-316), and furthers our understanding of Chinese word recognition processes.

Lateral Bias in Visual Working Memory

The present study aimed to evaluate functional cerebral asymmetries of visual working memory (VWM) in relation to language lateralization. The bilateral change detection paradigm with capital letters as stimuli and the translingual lexical decision task were used to assess VWM and language asymmetry, respectively, in a sample of 99 younger healthy participants (59 women). Participant attention was cued towards right or left visual half-field. For the VWM task, men and women were more accurate and faster when stimuli were presented in the right visual half-field compared to the left visual half-field. As expected, a significant right visual half-field advantage was demonstrated in the lexical decision task in performance accuracy (but not response time). The results also revealed no relationship between lateralization in VWM and lexical decision. VWM performance accuracy decreased significantly with increasing asymmetry. This relationship was significant for women, but not men. Taken together, the present study demonstrates that the lateral bias in visual working memory is independent from language lateralization, and less lateralized individuals perform better than individuals with larger asymmetries in both visual half-field tasks.

Unravelling the Covert Role of Subcortex in Lexical Decision of Pseudowords

A pseudoword is one that could exist in a language in that all of its sounds and combinations are permitted, but it has no meaning whatsoever. The subcortex is the part of the brain that lies directly below the cerebral cortex. Structural and functional alterations to the subcortical structures will have an impact on the person’s semantic and phonological processing, which will eventually slow down their capacity to distinguish words and pseudowords. Aim of our study was to analyse the impact of subcortical lesions on participants’ abilities to recognize pseudowords through a lexical decisionmaking task. Participants included 20 people with subcortical lesions (experimental group) between the ages of 40 and 60 years, and 20 neurotypical adults (control group) between the ages of 41 and 50 and 51 and 60 years. The participants were shown the list of 20 selected words and pseudo words one by one in Malayalam language with varying syllable lengths (2 syllable, 3 syllable, 4 syllable and, 5 syllable lengths) using DMDX software in Auto mode. The lexical decision task was given to the subjects, and the software automatically recorded the reaction time and average task completion time in milliseconds. On analysis of visual pseudo word recognition abilities based on reaction time and task completion time, experimental group were significantly affected than control group. The mean reaction time and task completion time increased gradually on analysis of the impact with increasing pseudoword complexity in experimental group. This study substantiates that in addition to functional cortical structures, normal subcortical structure functioning plays an inevitable role in pseudoword recognition. The results will be helpful in developing intervention techniques to enhance cognitive-linguistic processing.

Learning new meanings for known L2 words: Long-term semantic representation is updated to integrate new information after consolidation.

Previous research about learning new meanings for known words in second language (L2) has found that semantic relatedness, i.e., congruency, between new and existing meanings benefits encoding and explicit memory of new meanings, and reduces instant interference on accessing existing meanings. However, they did not take the memory consolidation process into account. Thus, integration of new meaning into long-term semantic memory, update of existing meaning representation, and the impact of semantic relatedness between new and existing meanings in this process remain unclear. The present study used the event-related potential (ERP) technique to explore these questions. We asked Chinese students to learn English known words' subdominant meanings variedly related to existing meanings and probed semantic representations with EEG recorded in primed lexical decision tasks four times before and after consolidation. We found that new meaning needs to go through offline consolidation to get integrated. Semantic relatedness/congruency boosted new meaning integration, not by directly expediting it during encoding or preliminary offline consolidation, but by promoting the update of existing meaning representation first, which presumably paved the way for better incorporation of new meaning in the long run. The whole pattern of results implies that long-term semantic representation of existing meaning is updated to integrate related new meaning after consolidation, which not only draws a clearer picture of L2 ambiguous word acquisition but also bears broader implications for research on memory updating.

The processing of English prefixed and suffixed words by Chinese-English bilinguals

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This study had two specific research goals. First, it investigated the relative importance of meaning and form in bilingual morphological processing of English prefixed and suffixed words. Second, it probed how target language proficiency and morphological type moderated bilingual morphological processing. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study implemented the masked morphological priming paradigm that administered three prime types (Transparent, Opaque, and Form) from two morphological types (prefix and suffix) to three Chinese-English bilingual groups (advanced, intermediate, and lower-intermediate). The critical stimuli included the Transparent (e.g., visualize-VISUAL; disagreement-DISAGREE), the Opaque (e.g., vanity-VAN; submission-MISSION), and the Form (e.g., example-EXAM; apparent-PARENT) English words. Data and Analysis: A total of 120 Chinese-English bilinguals representing three levels of distinct English competence participated in a masked priming lexical decision experiment. Direct comparisons were made using the linear mixed-effects models on bilingual groups’ priming effects from the Transparent, the Opaque, and the Form conditions of both English prefixed and suffixed words. Findings/Conclusion: The results exhibited that compared to suffixed words Chinese-English bilinguals altogether were less sensitive to the internal structure of prefixed words. The results presented that target language proficiency and morphological type moderated bilingual morphological processing, with the advanced Chinese-English bilinguals approximating previous native English speakers in processing English suffixed words. Originality: This study compared the priming effects from the Transparent, the Opaque, and the Form conditions of both English prefixed and suffixed words among three Chinese-English bilingual groups with distinct English competence. This study therefore should be the first empirical study that simultaneously evaluates the effects of target language proficiency and morphological type on bilingual morphological processing of prefixed and suffixed words. Significance/Implications: The present results indicate that target language proficiency and morphological type interact to impact bilingual morphological processing. Besides, this study provides important methodological and statistical implications for future studies.

The relationship between perception and production of illusory vowels in a second language

Korean learners of English are known to repair consonant clusters, which are not allowed in their native language, with an epenthetic vowel [ɨ]. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the perception–production link of such an illusory vowel in a second language (L2) is only within and not across processing levels, as proposed in a previous study regarding L2 segments. We assessed the perception and production of English onset clusters by Korean learners and native English speakers at the prelexical (AX discrimination and pseudoword read-aloud tasks) and lexical (lexical decision and picture-naming tasks) levels, using the same participants and stimuli across the tasks. Results showed that accuracy in not producing an epenthetic vowel between the two consonants of onset cluster was not significantly associated with accurate perception of the cluster either within or across processing levels. The results suggest that production and perception accuracy in L2 phonotactics are independent to a certain extent.

Sensitivity to orthographic vs. phonological constraints on word recognition: An ERP study with deaf and hearing readers

The role of phonology in word recognition has previously been investigated using a masked lexical decision task and transposed letter (TL) nonwords that were either pronounceable (barve) or unpronounceable (brvae). We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate these effects in skilled deaf readers, who may be more sensitive to orthotactic than phonotactic constraints, which are conflated in English. Twenty deaf and twenty hearing adults completed a masked lexical decision task while ERPs were recorded. The groups were matched in reading skill and IQ, but deaf readers had poorer phonological ability. Deaf readers were faster and more accurate at rejecting TL nonwords than hearing readers. Neither group exhibited an effect of nonword pronounceability in RTs or accuracy. For both groups, the N250 and N400 components were modulated by lexicality (more negative for nonwords). The N250 was not modulated by nonword pronounceability, but pronounceable nonwords elicited a larger amplitude N400 than unpronounceable nonwords. Because pronounceable nonwords are more word-like, they may incite activation that is unresolved when no lexical entry is found, leading to a larger N400 amplitude. Similar N400 pronounceability effects for deaf and hearing readers, despite differences in phonological sensitivity, suggest these TL effects arise from sensitivity to lexical-level orthotactic constraints. Deaf readers may have an advantage in processing TL nonwords because of enhanced early visual attention and/or tight orthographic-to-semantic connections, bypassing the phonologically mediated route to word recognition.

Exploring pattern recognition: what is the relationship between the recognition of words, faces and other objects?

Debate surrounds processes of visual recognition, with no consensus as to whether recognition of distinct object categories (faces, bodies, cars, and words) is domain specific or subserved by domain-general visual recognition mechanisms. Here, we investigated correlations between the performance of 74 participants on recognition tasks for words, faces and other object categories. Participants completed a counter-balanced test battery of the Cambridge Face, Car and Body Parts Memory tests, as well as a standard four category lexical decision task, with response time and recognition accuracy as dependent variables. Results revealed significant correlations across domains for both recognition accuracy and response time, providing some support for domain-general pattern recognition. Further exploration of the data using principal component analysis (PCA) revealed a two-component model for both the response time and accuracy data. However, how the various word and object recognition tasks fitted these components varied considerably but did hint at familiarity/expertise as a common factor. In sum, we argue a complex relationship exists between domain-specific processing and domain-general processing, but that this is shaped by expertise. To further our understanding of pattern recognition, research investigating the recognition of words, faces and other objects in dyslexic individuals is recommended, as is research exploiting neuroimaging methodologies, with excellent temporal resolution, to chart the temporal specifics of different forms of visual pattern recognition.

Empowerment-Themed Advertising Effects: Activation of Empowerment and Objectification Schemas in Women Age 18-35

ABSTRACT Advertisements that ostensibly serve to empower women have become popular in recent years, but recent research calls into question the psychological effectiveness of these advertisements. While seemingly progressive, empowerment-themed advertisements (ETAs) often pair empowerment-themed narratives with objectifying visuals despite the established harmful effects of objectification in media. Though empowerment and objectification intuitively seem incompatible, this relationship has not been empirically tested. The current study used experimental design to examine the relationship between empowerment and objectification schemas following exposure to ETAs. U.S. women age 18–35 (N= 273) were randomly assigned to view advertisements from one of five conditions displaying combinations of high/low empowerment and objectification themes. They then completed a lexical decision task (LDT) to measure schema activation. While ETAs were perceived as significantly more empowering than other advertisement types in the manipulation check, no advertising condition exhibited greater activation of empowerment schemas than the control group as measured by the LDT, suggesting that ETAs were largely ineffective at activating empowerment schemas. Contrary to initial expectations, there was no evidence that objectification content suppressed priming of empowerment schemas, though interpretation of the objectification schema findings is complicated by the likely impact of cognitive load on LDT response times.

Exploring the (lack of) facilitative effect of emoji for word processing

We explore whether emoji were associatively linked to emotion concepts represented in emotion-laden words, in line with the Associative-Propositional Evaluation model. Specifically, we tested these principles by exploring whether emotionally-congruent emoji could enhance word processing (Study 1 & 2) and recall (Study 3). In Study 1, participants completed a lexical decision task where word valence was manipulated. Emoji were appended to words which were either congruent, incongruent, or controls. No effects were found for emoji valence on response accuracy or latency. Study 2 presented words which varied in valence alongside congruent or control emoji where self-report valence evaluations were obtained. No effects were observed for emoji valence on word valence evaluations. Study 3 included emoji as primes to test the effect on word recall. No effects were found on word recall accuracy. Overall, the current findings suggest that emoji do not support word processing and may not be associatively linked to emotion concepts.

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.

Losing the sense of smell does not disrupt processing of odor words

Whether language is grounded in action and perception has been a key question in cognitive science, yet little attention has been given to the sense of smell. We directly test whether smell is necessary for comprehension of odor language, by comparing language processing in a group of participants with no sense of smell (anosmics) to a group of control participants. We found no evidence for a difference in online comprehension of odor and taste language between anosmics and controls using a lexical decision task and a semantic similarity judgment task, suggesting olfaction is not critical to the comprehension of odor language. Contrary to predictions, anosmics were better at remembering odor words, and rated odor and taste words as more positively valenced than control participants. This study finds no detriment to odor language after losing the sense of smell, supporting the proposal that odor language is not grounded in odor perception.

Some neighbors are more interfering: Asymmetric priming by stroke neighbors in Chinese character recognition

Chinese is a visually complex logographic script that consists of square-shaped characters, with each character composed of strokes. Previous masked priming studies using single-character Chinese stroke neighbors (i.e., visually similar characters differing in only one or two strokes, e.g., 大/犬) have shown facilitatory or inhibitory priming effects. We tested whether the mixed pattern of stroke neighbor priming might be an instance of asymmetry in priming that has been observed previously with Japanese kana and Latin alphabets. Specifically, a prime lacking a stroke (or line segment) that is present in the target speeds up the recognition of its stroke neighbor almost as much as the identity prime (e.g., 刀-刃 = 刃-刃), but not the converse (e.g., 刃-刀 >> 刀-刀). Two experiments, one using a character match task and the second using lexical decision, showed a robust asymmetry in priming by stroke neighbors. The results suggest that the early letter identification process is similar across script types, as anticipated by the Noisy Channel model, which regards the first stage of visual word recognition as a language-universal perceptual process.

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.

Temporal dynamics of form and meaning in morphologically complex word processing: An ERP study on Korean inflected verbs

The word stem is distinguished as the core component in verb inflections that envelopes essential semantic and syntactic properties, playing a central role in word processing. In the present study, in order to find the role of form and meaning during the visual recognition of morphologically complex words, the effect of the stem length of inflected Korean verbs was examined in an event-related potential (ERP) lexical decision experiment. Additionally, a potential modulation of whole-word frequency in morphological effect was investigated in order to locate the temporal locus of sublexical (i.e., morphological) and lexico-semantic processing. Behavioral results showed that lexical decision times were faster for targets with shorter stem length compared to targets with identical word length but longer stem length. A significant interaction between the whole-word frequency and stem length was also found, in which stem length effect was not significant in words with high frequency. The ERP data revealed corollary results; the frequency effect emerged as early as N100, followed by significant modulations of N250, N400, and P600 components. The stem length effect was demonstrated in latency ranges N250, N400, and N400. In the N400 component, the interaction of two factors was revealed in which stem length effect shown only in the medium- and low-word frequency levels, but not in the high-frequency level. Taken together, the present data provide evidence for simultaneous activation of morphological and lexico-semantic information in early visual word processing after scanning the whole-form of a word. The results are discussed in terms of the current models of morphologically complex word processing.

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.

Native language experience with tones influences both phonetic and lexical processes when acquiring a second tonal language

Second language acquisition of lexical tones requires that a learner form appropriate tone categories and bind those categories to lexical representations for fluent word recognition. Research has shown that second language (L2) learners with no previous tone language experience can become highly accurate at identification of tones in isolation, but, even at advanced levels, have difficulty using tones to differentiate real words from nonwords. The present research considers the same skills in L2 learners who do have previous tone experience. Using largely the same tasks and stimuli previously used with English speakers in Pelzl, Lau, Guo, & DeKeyser (2021a) (“PLGD21”), we examined the tone identification and (tone) word recognition abilities of thirty-three Vietnamese speakers who had achieved advanced L2 proficiency in Mandarin. Results indicate that Vietnamese speakers experience different tone identification difficulties than English speakers, presumably due to interference from their native language tone categories. However, unlike English speakers in previous studies, Vietnamese speakers did not display differences in lexical decision accuracy for vowel and tone nonwords. These results provide evidence of the complexities of cross-linguistic influence, illustrating that the influence of native language tones can be illuminated by considering perception and acquisition at multiple levels.

Abstract words processing induces parasympathetic activation: A thermal imaging study.

words (e.g., freedom) compose a significant part of speech. Despite this, learning them is complicated. Abstract concepts collect more heterogeneous exemplars and are more detached from sensory modalities than concrete concepts. Recent views propose that, because of their complexity, other people are pivotal for abstract concepts' acquisition and use, e.g., to explain their meaning. We tested this hypothesis using a combined behavioral and thermal imaging paradigm. Twenty-one Italian children (10\F, mean age: 6 years) determined whether acoustic stimuli (concrete and abstract words; non-words) were or not correct Italian words (lexical decision). Concrete terms yielded faster responses than abstract ones: for the first time, this effect appears with response times in very young children. More crucially, the higher increase in temperature of the nasal tip (i.e., typically associated with parasympathetic dominance of the neurovegetative response) suggests that, with abstract concepts, children might be more socially and cognitively engaged.