Nonword Targets Research Articles

Keeping track of who said what: Performance on a modified auditory n-back task with young and older adults.

A modified auditory n-back task was used to examine the ability of young and older listeners to remember the content of spoken messages presented from different locations. The messages were sentences from the Coordinative Response Measure (CRM) corpus, and the task was to judge whether a target word on the current trial was the same as in the most recent presentation from the same location (left, center, or right). The number of trials between comparison items (the number back) was varied while keeping the number of items to be held in memory (the number of locations) constant. Three levels of stimulus uncertainty were evaluated. Low- and high-uncertainty conditions were created by holding the talker (voice) and nontarget words constant, or varying them unpredictably across trials. In a medium-uncertainty condition, each location was associated with a specific talker, thus increasing predictability and ecological validity. Older listeners performed slightly worse than younger listeners, but there was no significant difference in response times (RT) for the two groups. An effect of the number back (n) was seen for both PC and RT; PC decreased steadily with n, while RT was fairly constant after a significant increase from n = 1 to n = 2. Apart from the lower PC for the older group, there was no effect involving age for either PC or RT. There was an effect of target word location (faster RTs with a late-occurring target) and an effect of uncertainty (faster RTs with a constant talker-location mapping, relative to the high-uncertainty condition). A similar pattern of performance was observed with a group of elderly hearing-impaired listeners (with and without shaping to ensure audibility), but RTs were substantially slower and the effect of uncertainty was absent. Apart from the observed overall slowing of RTs, these results provide little evidence for an effect of age-related changes in cognitive abilities on this task.

Masked primes activate feature representations in reading aloud.

Theories of reading aloud are silent about the role of subphonemic/subsegmental representations in translating print to sound. However, there is empirical evidence suggesting that feature representations are activated in speech production and visual word recognition. In the present study, we sought to determine whether masked primes activate feature representations in reading aloud using a variation of the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). We found that target nonwords (e.g., BAF) were read aloud faster when preceded by masked nonword primes that shared their initial phoneme with the target (e.g., bez), or primes whose initial phoneme shared all features except voicing with the first phoneme of the target (e.g., piz), compared with unrelated primes (e.g., suz). We obtained the same result in 2 experiments that used different participants and prime durations (around 60 ms in Experiment 1 and 50 ms in Experiment 2). The significant masked feature priming effect that was observed in both experiments converges with the empirical evidence in the speech production and visual word recognition domains indicating a functional role for features in reading aloud. Our findings motivate the further development of current theories of reading aloud and have important implications for extant theories of speech production.

The Effect of Non-sentential Context Prosody on Homographs' Lexical Activation in Persian.

This study examines the effect of non-sentential context prosody pattern on lexical activation in Persian. For this purpose a questionnaire including target and non-target words is used. The target words are homographs with two possible stress patterns belonging to different syntactic categories. Participants are asked to read out the words aloud and note the first word that comes to their mind. The results show that by reading the target words, both meanings of the target words are activated in mind and the prosodic pattern of the non-sentential preceding context does not affect the activation of the other stress pattern meaning. This result suggests that the metrical prosodic pattern of non-sentential context is not a strong constraint to determine which meaning of the target word must be activated. The experiment also illustrates that the stress pattern used to read the target words does not necessarily matches the stress pattern of the target word which relates to the written word. These findings confirm Swinney (Verb Learn Verb Behav 18:645-665, 1979) and Elston-Güttler and Friederici's (J Mem Lang 52(2):256-283, 2005) finding that both meanings of an ambiguous word are accessed at the first stage. This study shows that in lack of semantic context, Persian natives behave homographs as ambiguous words and there is no bias towards preferring one meaning over another.

Talker variability in spoken word recognition: Evidence from repetition priming

The effect of talker variability on the processing of spoken words is investigated using short-term repetition priming experiments. Prime-target pairs, either repeated (e.g., queen-queen) or unrelated (e.g., bell-queen), were produced by the same or different male speakers. Two interstimulus intervals (ISI, 50 and 250 ms) were used to explore the time course of repetition priming and voice specificity effects. The auditory stimuli were presented to 40 listeners, who completed a lexical decision task followed by a talker voice discrimination task. Results from the lexical decision task showed that the magnitude of priming was attenuated in the different-talker condition, indicating a talker variability effect on spoken word recognition. In contrast, the talker variability effect on priming did not differ between the two ISIs. Talker voice discrimination was faster and more accurate for nonword targets, but not for word targets, indicating a lexical status effect on voice discrimination. Taken together, these results suggest that talker variability affects recognition of spoken words, and that the effect cannot be simply attributed to non-lexical voice discrimination.

Lexical Retrieval is not by Competition: Evidence from the Blocked Naming Paradigm.

A central issue in research on speech production is whether or not the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon is a competitive process. An important experimental paradigm to study the dynamics of lexical retrieval is the blocked naming paradigm, in which participants name pictures of objects that are grouped by semantic category ('homogenous' or 'related' blocks) or not grouped by semantic category ('heterogeneous' or 'unrelated' blocks). Typically, pictures are repeated multiple times (or cycles) within both related and unrelated blocks. It is known that participants are slower in related than in unrelated blocks when the data are collapsed over all within-block repetitions. This semantic interference effect, as observed in the blocked naming task, is the strongest empirical evidence for the hypothesis of lexical selection by competition. Here we show, contrary to the accepted view, that the default polarity of semantic context effects in the blocked naming paradigm is facilitation, rather than interference. In a series of experiments we find that interference arises only when items repeat within a block, and only because of that repetition: What looks to be 'semantic interference' in the blocked naming paradigm is actually less repetition priming in related compared to unrelated blocks. These data undermine the theory of lexical selection by competition and indicate a model in which the most highly activated word is retrieved, regardless of the activation levels of nontarget words. We conclude that the theory of lexical selection by competition, and by extension the important psycholinguistic models based on that assumption, are no longer viable, and frame a new way to approach the question of how words are retrieved in spoken language production.

Lip Reading Without Awareness

Lip Reading Without Awareness

Effective practices to enhance immigrant kindergarteners’ second language vocabulary learning through storybook reading

This study examined the impact of direct instruction and interactive instruction on immigrant kindergarten children’s vocabulary learning during storybook reading. (In the present study the terms “immigrants” and “second language learners” are used alternatively meaning kindergarteners from immigrant families who are in the process of acquiring a second language besides their mother tongue.) Eighty seven immigrant kindergarten children, aged 4–6 years old (mean = 61.68 months, standard deviations = .51) were recruited from 12 public kindergarten classrooms located in Crete. Children were acquiring Greek as a second language. The immigrant children of the 12 kindergarten classrooms were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group. During the intervention phase, six stories were read twice in whole group settings. Target and non-target words were assessed by multiple choice vocabulary measure before and after the storybook readings. In the first experimental group, children were provided brief explanations of target words by direct instruction. In the second experimental group, children were involved actively in discussing target words according to interactive instruction techniques. In the control group stories were read without any explanation of target vocabulary. Results showed that interactive instruction was more beneficial on target vocabulary learning than direct instruction and the impact was greater for instructed words than for uninstructed ones. In addition, results showed that boys and girls responded differently to the teaching procedures. Specifically, in both conditions where teaching procedures were implemented, girls outperformed boys on instructed words. Furthermore, children’s initial level in Greek receptive vocabulary and target word knowledge had a significant impact on target word learning.

Impact of thalamic deep brain Stimulation on lexical processing

The contribution of subcortical structures to language-related processing is controversial, but interestingly Deep Brain Stimulation for the treatment of Movement Disorders can go along with reduced lexical capacities. Against this background, word processing functions were assessed as a function of thalamic versus subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. Both on and off stimulation, 14 (2/12 f/m; 64.71 (± 7.88) years) Parkinson's disease patients with subthalamic and 10 (6/4 f/m; 68.00 (± 10.39) years) Essential Tremor patients with thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation engaged in a Lexical Decision Task, requiring the differentiation of acoustically presented words from non-words. These stimuli were preceded by non-target words, either phonemically or semantically related or unrelated to the following presentation. During task performance, event-related potentials were recorded. This allowed for the determination of (i) lexical decision time, (ii) priming effects, and (iii) the N400 as neurophysiological correlate of lexical stimulus processing. Measurements were additionally performed in 19 (9/10 f/m; 29.95 (± 5.60) years) young and 12 (5/7 f/m; 66.00 (± 7.30) age matched healthy subjects. Overall, the performance speed in the Lexical Decision Task correlated with N400 peak latency (rs = 0.49; p = 0.003). N400 amplitudes were abnormally low in the group of patients with Parkinson's disease. With respect to on-off effects, active compared to inactive stimulation prolonged word decisions (p = 0.010) and reduced N400 potentials in thalamic (p = 0.018), but not subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation (see Fig. 1). This was irrespective of word priming. In conclusion the expression of N400 and Lexical Decision Task performance are influenced by thalamic state functions, modulated by Deep Brain Stimulation. This is compatible with the idea of thalamo-cortical engagement of word-related processing, as suggested by 6 influential biolinguistic models. In clinical terms, the findings specify cognitive sequels of Deep Brain Stimulation in a target-specific way.

Sugar ingestion and dichotic listening: Increased perceptual capacity is more than motivation.

Participants ingested a sugar drink or a sugar-free drink and then engaged in a pair of dichotic listening tasks. Tasks presented category labels then played a series of word pairs, one in the left ear and one in the right. Participants attempted to identify pairs containing a target category member. Target category words were homonyms. For example, arms appeared as a target in the “body parts” category. Nontargets that played along with targets were related to a category-appropriate version of the target (e.g., sleeves), a category-inappropriate version (e.g., weapons), or were unrelated to either version of the target (e.g., plant). Hence, an effect of nontarget type on number of targets missed was evidence that participants processed nontargets for meaning. In the divided attention task, participants monitored both ears. In the focused attention task, participants monitored the left ear. Half the participants in each group had the divided attention task before the focused attention task; the other half had the focused attention task before the divided attention task. We set task lengths to about 12 min so working on the first task would give sufficient time for metabolizing sugar from the drink before the start of the second task. Nontarget word type significantly affected targets missed in both tasks. Drink type affected performance in the divided attention task only after sufficient time for converting sugar into blood glucose. The result supports an energy model for the effect of sugar ingestion on perceptual tasks rather than a motivational model.

Later Maturation of the Beneficial Than the Detrimental Effect of Selective Memory Retrieval

In adults, selective memory retrieval can both impair and improve recall of other memories. The study reported here examined whether children also show these two faces of memory retrieval. Employing a variant of the directed-forgetting task, we asked second, fourth, and seventh graders to study a list of target and nontarget words. After study, the participants received a cue to either forget or continue remembering the list. We subsequently asked some participants to recall the nontarget words before we tested their memory for the target words; for the remaining participants, we tested memory only for the target words. Prior retrieval of nontarget words impaired retrieval of to-be-remembered target words, regardless of children’s age. In contrast, prior retrieval of nontarget words improved recall of to-be-forgotten target words in seventh graders, though not in fourth and second graders. These results suggest a developmental dissociation between the two faces of memory retrieval and indicate later maturation of the beneficial effect than of the detrimental effect of selective memory retrieval.

Lexical Influences on the Sublexical System during Nonword Spelling

We investigated the combined contributions of multiple mechanisms that have been previously indicated to underlie the lexical system’s influence on the spelling of unfamiliar words. In two lexical priming studies we presented lists of words and nonwords aurally for participants to spell only the nonwords. Word primes that rhymed with the target nonwords immediately preceded the nonwords (Experiment 1) or there were two intervening items between the prime word and target nonword (Experiment 2). We found that prime words influenced nonword spellings even across intervening items, suggesting that the presentation of a real word may temporarily re-weight sublexical sound-to-spelling correspondences. Importantly, word neighbors were also found to influence nonword spelling, even in the absence of a prime word. Our data provide evidence of the operation of multiple mechanisms that underlie the lexical system’s influence on the sublexical system during the spelling of unfamiliar words (or nonwords).

Patterns of Phonological Overlap between Non-word Error and Target in Jargon Aphasia

Patterns of Phonological Overlap between Non-word Error and Target in Jargon Aphasia

Morphological Family Size effects in L1 and L2 processing: An electrophysiological study

The present study examined Morphological Family Size effects in first and second language processing. Items with a high or low Dutch (L1) Family Size were contrasted in four experiments involving Dutch–English bilinguals. In two experiments, reaction times (RTs) were collected in English (L2) and Dutch (L1) lexical decision tasks; in two other experiments, an L1 and L2 go/no-go lexical decision task were performed while Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Two questions were addressed. First, is the ERP signal sensitive to the morphological productivity of words? Second, does nontarget language activation in L2 processing spread beyond the item itself, to the morphological family of the activated nontarget word? The two behavioural experiments both showed a facilitatory effect of Dutch Family Size, indicating that the morphological family in the L1 is activated regardless of language context. In the two ERP experiments, Family Size effects were found to modulate the N400 component. Less negative waveforms were observed for words with a high L1 Family Size compared to words with a low L1 Family Size in the N400 time window, in both the L1 and L2 task. In addition, these Family Size effects persisted in later time windows. The data are discussed in light of the Morphological Family Resonance Model (MFRM) model of morphological processing and the BIA + model.

Children Develop Initial Orthographic Knowledge During Storybook Reading

We examined whether young children acquire orthographic knowledge during structured adult-led storybook reading even though minimal viewing time is devoted to print. Sixty-two kindergarten children were read 12 storybook “chapters” while their eye movements were tracked. Results indicated that the children quickly acquired initial mental graphemic representations of target nonwords. This learning occurred even though they focused on the target nonwords approximately one fourth of the total time while viewing the pages. Their ability to acquire the initial orthographic representations of the target nonwords and their viewing time was affected by the linguistic statistical regularities of the words. The results provide evidence of orthographic learning during structured storybook reading and for the use of implicit linguistic statistical regularities for learning new orthographic word forms in the early stages of reading development.

An fMRI examination of the effects of acoustic-phonetic and lexical competition on access to the lexical-semantic network

The current study explored how factors of acoustic-phonetic and lexical competition affect access to the lexical-semantic network during spoken word recognition. An auditory semantic priming lexical decision task was presented to subjects while in the MR scanner. Prime-target pairs consisted of prime words with the initial voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/, and /k/ followed by word and nonword targets. To examine the neural consequences of lexical and sound structure competition, primes either had voiced minimal pair competitors or they did not, and they were either acoustically modified to be poorer exemplars of the voiceless phonetic category or not. Neural activation associated with semantic priming (Unrelated–Related conditions) revealed a bilateral fronto-temporo-parietal network. Within this network, clusters in the left insula/inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left superior temporal gyrus (STG), and left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) showed sensitivity to lexical competition. The pMTG also demonstrated sensitivity to acoustic modification, and the insula/IFG showed an interaction between lexical competition and acoustic modification. These findings suggest the posterior lexical-semantic network is modulated by both acoustic-phonetic and lexical structure, and that the resolution of these two sources of competition recruits frontal structures.

Nonword repetition and nonword reading abilities in adults who do and do not stutter

PurposeIn the present study a nonword repetition and a nonword reading task were used to investigate the behavioral (speech accuracy) and speech kinematic (movement variability measured as lip aperture variability index; speech duration) profiles of groups of young adults who do (AWS) and do not stutter (control). MethodParticipants were 9 AWS (8 males, Mean age=32.2, SD=14.7) and 9 age- and sex-matched control participants (Mean age=31.8, SD=14.6). For the nonword repetition task, participants were administered the Nonword Repetition Test (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998). For the reading task, participants were required to read out target nonwords varying in length (6 vs. 11 syllables). Repeated measures analyses of variance were conducted to compare the groups in percent speech accuracy for both tasks; only for the nonword reading task, the groups were compared in movement variability and speech duration. ResultsThe groups were comparable in percent accuracy in nonword repetition. Findings from nonword reading revealed a trend for the AWS to show a lower percent of accurate productions compared to the control group. AWS also showed significantly higher movement variability and longer speech durations compared to the control group in nonword reading. Some preliminary evidence for group differences in practice effect (seen as differences between the early vs. later 5 trials) was evident in speech duration. ConclusionsFindings suggest differences between AWS and control groups in phonemic encoding and/or speech motor planning and production. Findings from nonword repetition vs. reading highlight the need for careful consideration of nonword properties.Educational objectives At the end of this activity the reader will be able to: (a) summarize the literature on nonword repetition skills in adults who stutter, (b) describe processes underlying nonword repetition and nonword reading, (c) summarize whether or not adults who stutter differ from those who do not in the behavioral and kinematic markers of nonword reading performance, (d) discuss future directions for research.

Aging effects on ERP correlates of emotional word discrimination

ObjectiveTo explore age-, and valence specific ERP-characteristics of word-discrimination processes. MethodsA group of young (mean age: 21.26yrs) and elderly (mean age: 65.73yrs) individuals participated. The task was to respond to a word (target) with valence (neutral, negative, positive) and disregard others (non-target) with a different valence. Behavioral indices and the N4 and late positive complex (LPC) components were analyzed. ResultsFor words with negative valence performance was better for non-target stimuli in the young. Higher N4 was elicited by negative non-target words in the fronto-central areas. Target words elicited a P3b-like LPC in the young while a P3a-like LPC was observed in the elderly. ConclusionThe findings indicate that inhibition elicited by aversive events is observed for word stimuli as well, and is most effective in the young. SignificanceThe effect of valence during emotional word discrimination shows age-dependent differences reflected by ERPs.

Expectation and Entropy in Spoken Word Recognition: Effects of Age and Hearing Acuity

Background/Study Context: Older adults, especially those with reduced hearing acuity, can make good use of linguistic context in word recognition. Less is known about the effects of the weighted distribution of probable target and nontarget words that fit the sentence context (response entropy). The present study examined the effects of age, hearing acuity, linguistic context, and response entropy on spoken word recognition. Methods: Participants were 18 older adults with good hearing acuity (M age = 74.3 years), 18 older adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss (M age = 76.1 years), and 18 young adults with age-normal hearing (M age = 19.6 years). Participants heard sentence-final words using a word-onset gating paradigm, in which words were heard with increasing amounts of onset information until they could be correctly identified. Degrees of context varied from a neutral context to a high context condition. Results: Older adults with poor hearing acuity required a greater amount of word onset information for recognition of words when heard in a neutral context compared with older adults with good hearing acuity and young adults. This difference progressively decreased with an increase in words’ contextual probability. Unlike the young adults, both older adult groups’ word recognition thresholds were sensitive to response entropy. Response entropy was not affected by hearing acuity. Conclusion: Increasing linguistic context mitigates the negative effect of age and hearing loss on word recognition. The effect of response entropy on older adults’ word recognition is discussed in terms of an age-related inhibition deficit.

Meaning first: A case for language-independent access to word meaning in the bilingual brain

This study aimed to determine how deeply a word is processed in the bilingual brain before the word’s language membership plays a role in lexical selection. In two ERP experiments, balanced Spanish–English bilinguals read lists of words and pseudowords in Spanish and English, and performed in each language (1) a language-specific lexical decision task, e.g., respond to real words in Spanish, and (2) a language-specific category decision tasks, e.g., respond to Spanish words that refer to a person. In Experiment 1, infrequent words elicited larger negativity between 350 and 650ms post-stimulus onset for both target and non-target languages. This indicates that language membership did not block lexical access of non-target words, contrary to previous findings. In Experiment 2, we measured the onset of the target-category P300 as a way of determining if words from the non-target language were temporarily treated as targets. When Spanish was the target language, the ERP waveforms diverged early based on semantic category (people versus non-people), indicating that non-target ‘English people’ words were briefly treated as potential targets. This finding indicates that meaning was accessed prior to using language membership for lexical selection. However, when English was the target language, the waveforms diverged first based on language (Spanish versus English) then semantic category. We argue that the order in which meaning or language membership are accessed may be based on the frequency of use of a bilingual’s languages: the more frequently a language is used (English was more frequently used herein), the faster the words are identified as members of the language, and the greater interference it causes when it is not the target language. In brief, these findings make the case for a moment in processing when language membership matters less than meaning.

Children benefit from morphological relatedness when they learn to spell new words

Use of morphologically related words often helps in selecting among spellings of sounds in French. For instance, final /wa/ may be spelled oi (e.g., envoi “sendoff”), oit (e.g., exploit “exploit”), ois (e.g., siamois, “siamese”), or oie (e.g., joie “joy”). The morphologically complex word exploiter “to exploit”, with a pronounced t, can be used to indicate that the stem exploit is spelled with a silent t. We asked whether 8-year-old children benefited from such cues to learn new spellings. Children read silently stories which included two target nonwords, one presented in an opaque condition and the other in a morphological condition. In the opaque condition, the sentence provided semantic information (e.g., a vensois is a musical instrument) but no morphological information that could justify the spelling of the target word's final sound. Such justification was available in the morphological condition (e.g., the vensoisist plays the vensois instrument, which justifies that vensois includes a final silent s). 30 min after having read the stories, children's orthographic learning was assessed by asking them to choose the correct spelling of each nonword from among three phonologically plausible alternatives (e.g., vensois, vensoit, vensoie). Children chose correct spellings more often in the morphological condition than the opaque condition, even though the root (vensois) had been presented equally often in both conditions. That is, children benefited from information about the spelling of the morphologically complex word to learn the spelling of the stem.