Neighbor Priming Research Articles

Masked orthographic neighbor priming effects in Chinese two-character words

AbstractIn masked priming lexical decision tasks in alphabetic or syllabic script languages, latencies are longer when a word target is primed by a higher frequency neighbor (e.g., blue–BLUR) than when primed by an unrelated word of equivalent frequency (e.g., care–BLUR) – an “inhibitory neighbor priming effect.” In contrast, Zhou et al. (1999) demonstrated facilitatory orthographic neighbor priming for two-character Chinese words (e.g., 华丽–华贵). However, Zhou et al. did not control for relative prime-target frequency, which has been shown to be important in experiments when examining languages with other scripts. In the present Experiment 1 word neighbor primes (e.g., 容易-容貌) produced an inhibitory neighbor priming effect when the prime was higher frequency than the target, paralleling effects in other script languages. In further experiments, paralleling those in other script languages, two-character targets primed by nonword neighbors (容待-容貌) or single constituent characters matching the target in either position (容-容貌) showed significant facilitation. These results suggest that lexical activation/competition processes for two-character Chinese words are reasonably similar to those for words in alphabetic/syllabic script languages.

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.

Lexical Competition Without Phonology: Masked Orthographic Neighbor Priming With Deaf Readers

Skilled reading is thought to rely on well-specified lexical representations that compete during visual word recognition. The establishment of these lexical representations is assumed to be driven by phonology. To test the role of phonology, we examined the prime lexicality effect (PLE), the index of lexical competition in signing deaf (N = 28) and hearing (N = 28) adult readers of Hungarian matched in age and education. We found no PLE for deaf readers even when reading skills were controlled for. Surprisingly, the hearing controls also showed reduced PLE; however, the effect was modulated by reading skill. More skilled hearing readers showed PLE, while more skilled deaf readers did not. These results suggest that phonology contributes to lexical competition; however, high-quality lexical representations are not necessarily built through phonology in deaf readers.

二语词汇识别过程中的正字法邻近词效应研究

二语词汇识别过程中的正字法邻近词效应研究

Masked Phonological Neighbor Priming Effects of Katakana Words

Masked Phonological Neighbor Priming Effects of Katakana Words

ERP Effects of masked orthographic neighbour priming in deaf readers

ABSTRACTIn masked priming studies with hearing readers, neighbouring words (e.g. wine, vine) compete through lateral inhibition. Here, we asked whether lateral inhibition also characterises visual word recognition in deaf readers and whether the neural signature of this competition is the same as for hearing readers. Only real words have lexical representations that engage in lateral inhibition. Therefore, we compared processing of target words following neighbouring prime words (e.g. wine-VINE) and pseudowords (e.g. bine-VINE). Targets following prime words elicited larger amplitude N400s and slower lexical decision responses, indicating more effortful processing due to lateral inhibition. Although these effects went in the same direction for hearing and deaf readers, the distribution of the N400 effect differed. We associate the more anterior effect in hearing readers with stronger co-activation of, and competition among, phonological representations. Thus, deaf readers use lexical competition to recognise visual words, but it is primarily restricted to orthographic representations.

From sublexical facilitation to lexical competition: ERP effects of masked neighbor priming

Interactive-activation models posit that visual word recognition involves co-activation of orthographic neighbors (e.g., note, node) and competition among them via lateral inhibitory connections. Behavioral evidence of this lexical competition comes from masked priming paradigms, in which target words elicit slower responses when preceded by a neighbor (e.g., note-NODE) than when preceded by an unrelated word (e.g., kiss-NODE). In the present study, we used ERPs to investigate how masked high frequency word primes influence processing of low frequency word and pseudoword targets. Word targets preceded by a neighbor prime elicited larger negativities within the N400 window than those preceded by an unrelated prime across bilateral anterior sites, which we call a reversed N400 priming effect. Consistent with the behavioral literature, the size of the reversed N400 priming effect was larger for targets from high-density orthographic neighborhoods and for participants who scored higher on a behavioral measure of spelling recognition. Indeed, the opposite effect (i.e., smaller negativities within the N400 window for word targets preceded by a neighbor) was observed for words from low-density orthographic neighborhoods and for less-skilled spellers. Traditional priming was also observed within the N250 window for word targets and within both the N250 or N400 windows for pseudoword targets. The specificity of the reversed N400 priming effect to situations in which both words have precise lexical representations suggests that it, like the behavioral interference effect, indexes lexical competition during visual word recognition.

Inhibitory stroke neighbour priming in character recognition and reading in Chinese.

In alphabetic languages, prior exposure to a target word's orthographic neighbour influences word recognition in masked priming experiments and the process of word identification that occurs during normal reading. We investigated whether similar neighbour priming effects are observed in Chinese in 4 masked priming experiments (employing a forward mask and 33-ms, 50-ms, and 67-ms prime durations) and in an experiment that measured eye movements while reading. In these experiments, the stroke neighbour of a Chinese character was defined as any character that differed by the addition, deletion, or substitution of one or two strokes. Prime characters were either stroke neighbours or stroke non-neighbours of the target character, and each prime character had either a higher or a lower frequency of occurrence in the language than its corresponding target character. Frequency effects were observed in all experiments, demonstrating that the manipulation of character frequency was successful. In addition, a robust inhibitory priming effect was observed in response times for target characters in the masked priming experiments and in eye fixation durations for target characters in the reading experiment. This stroke neighbour priming was not modulated by the relative frequency of the prime and target characters. The present findings therefore provide a novel demonstration that inhibitory neighbour priming shown previously for alphabetic languages is also observed for nonalphabetic languages, and that neighbour priming (based on stroke overlap) occurs at the level of the character in Chinese.

Do masked orthographic neighbor primes facilitate or inhibit the processing of Kanji compound words?

In the masked priming paradigm, when a word target is primed by a higher frequency neighbor (e.g., blue-BLUR), lexical decision latencies are slower than when the same word is primed by an unrelated word of equivalent frequency (e.g., care-BLUR). This inhibitory neighbor priming effect (e.g., Davis & Lupker, 2006; Segui & Grainger, 1990) is taken as evidence for the lexical competition process that is an important component of localist activation-based models of visual word recognition (Davis, 2003; Grainger & Jacobs, 1996; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981). The present research looked for evidence of an inhibitory neighbor priming effect using words written in Japanese Kanji, a logographic, nonalphabetic script. In 4 experiments (Experiments 1A, 1B, 3A, and 3B), inhibitory neighbor priming effects were observed for low-frequency targets primed by higher frequency Kanji word neighbors ([symbol in text]). In contrast, there was a significant facilitation effect when targets were primed by Kanji nonword neighbors ([symbols in text]; Experiments 2 and 3). Significant facilitation was also observed when targets were primed by single constituent Kanji characters ([symbols in text]; Experiment 4). Taken together, these results suggest that lexical competition plays a role in the recognition of Kanji words, just as it does for words in alphabetic languages. However, in Kanji, and likely in other logographic languages, the effect of lexical competition appears to be counteracted by facilitory morphological priming due to the repetition of a morphological unit in the prime and target (i.e., in Kanji, each character represents a morpheme).

Lexical competition in a non-Roman, syllabic script: An inhibitory neighbour priming effect in Japanese Katakana

Previous masked priming studies have reported that lexical decision latencies are slower when a word target is primed by a higher-frequency neighbour (e.g., blue-BLUR) than when it is primed by an unrelated word of equivalent frequency (e.g., care-BLUR). These results suggest that lexical competition plays an important role in visual word identification in Indo-European languages such as English, French, and Dutch, consistent with activation-based accounts of lexical processing. The present research, using Japanese Katakana script, a syllabic script, demonstrates that lexical decision latencies were slower when targets were primed by word neighbour primes but not when targets were primed by nonword neighbour primes. Both results have clear parallels with previous research using Indo-European languages and therefore suggest that lexical competition is also an important component of word recognition processes in languages that do not employ the Roman alphabet.

When less is more: Feedback, priming, and the pseudoword superiority effect

The present study combined masked priming with electrophysiological recordings to investigate orthographic priming effects with nonword targets. Targets were pronounceable nonwords (e.g., STRENG) or consonant strings (e.g., STRBNG), that both differed from a real word by a single letter substitution (STRONG). Targets were preceded by related primes that could be the same as the target (e.g., streng–STRENG, strbng–STRBNG) or the real word neighbor of the target (e.g., strong–STRENG, strong–STRBNG). Independently of priming, pronounceable nonwords were associated with larger negativities than consonant strings, starting at 290 ms post-target onset. Overall, priming effects were stronger and longer-lasting with pronounceable nonwords than consonant strings. However, consonant string targets showed an early effect of word neighbor priming in the absence of an effect of repetition priming, whereas pronounceable nonwords showed both repetition and word neighbor priming effects in the same time window. This pattern of priming effects is taken as evidence for feedback from whole-word orthographic representations activated by the prime stimulus that influences bottom-up processing of prelexical representations during target processing.

Lexical precision in skilled readers: Individual differences in masked neighbor priming.

Two experiments investigated the relationship between masked form priming and individual differences in reading and spelling proficiency among university students. Experiment 1 assessed neighbor priming for 4-letter word targets from high- and low-density neighborhoods in 97 university students. The overall results replicated previous evidence of facilitatory neighborhood priming only for low-neighborhood words. However, analyses including measures of reading and spelling proficiency as covariates revealed that better spellers showed inhibitory priming for high-neighborhood words, while poorer spellers showed facilitatory priming. Experiment 2, with 123 participants, replicated the finding of stronger inhibitory neighbor priming in better spellers using 5-letter words and distinguished facilitatory and inhibitory components of priming by comparing neighbor primes with ambiguous and unambiguous partial-word primes (e.g., crow#, cr#wd, crown CROWD). The results indicate that spelling ability is selectively associated with inhibitory effects of lexical competition. The implications for theories of visual word recognition and the lexical quality hypothesis of reading skill are discussed.

Inhibitory neighbor priming effects in eye movements during reading

We report an eye movement experiment investigating whether prior processing of a word's orthographic neighbor in a sentence influences subsequent word processing during reading. There was greater difficulty in early word processing when a target word's neighbor rather than a control word appeared earlier in a sentence; this effect was uninfluenced by the relative lexical frequency of the word and its neighbor. We discuss this inhibitory neighbor priming effect in terms of competitive network models of word recognition and the process of lexical identification in the E-Z Reader model of oculomotor control (e.g., Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, & Rayner, 1998).

Is Masked Neighbor Priming Inhibitory?

To investigate neighbor effects in visual word recognition, the masked priming technique holds considerable advantages over unprimed methods, because a target word is used as its own control. However, inhibitory neighbor effects obtained with masked priming are still open for different interpretations, because the primes differ across conditions. Given this theoretical problem, it is useful to investigate neighbor priming effects using a prime as its own control. This option is available in the incremental priming technique (Jacobs, Grainger, & Ferrand, 1995), in which a within-condition baseline is created by comparing the response times (RTs) to a target when it is primed at different prime durations. In this study, we examined masked neighbor priming using this technique. Both the traditional and the within-condition baseline indicated that masked neighbor word priming is inhibitory in nature. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of visual word recognition.

Long-term priming of neighbours biases the word recognition process: Evidence from a lexical decision task.

The role of orthographically similar words (i.e., neighbours) in the word recognition process has been studied extensively using short-term priming paradigms (e.g., Colombo, 1986). Here we demonstrate that long-term effects of neighbour priming can also be obtained. Experiment 1 showed that prior study of a neighbour (e.g., TANGO) increased later lexical decision performance for similar words (e.g., MANGO), but decreased performance for similar pseudowords (e.g., LANGO). Experiment 2 replicated this bias effect and showed that the increase in lexical decision performance due to neighbour priming is selectively due to words from a relatively sparse neighbourhood. Explanations of the bias effect in terms of lexical activation and episodic memory retrieval are discussed.

What comes after phonological awareness? using lexical experts to investigate orthographic processes in reading

Abstract This research was designed to provide insight into the contribution of orthographic processes to skilled reading and spelling. Instead of defining orthographic knowledge in the manner dictated by dual-route frameworks, the research attempted to assess the quality and precision of skilled readers' lexical representational system. Measures of repetition and neighbour priming were derived from masked priming paradigms and used to predict reading comprehension and a number of measures of spelling performance in a sample of 62 skilled readers. Reading comprehension was predicted primarily by a measure of memory processing span. The best unique predictors of spelling were average lexical classification time, and measures of repetition priming. Skilled spellers showed enhanced repetition priming, particularly for nonword stimuli. The results are compatible with the restricted interactive model of reading skill, which assumes that skilled reading and spelling relies on a functionally autonomous lexical s...