Types Of Nonwords Research Articles

Nonword reading across orthographies: How flexible is the choice of reading units?

It was predicted that children learning to read inconsistent orthographies (e.g., English) should show considerable flexibility in making use of spelling–sound correspondences at different unit sizes whereas children learning to read consistent orthographies (e.g., German) should mainly employ small-size grapheme–phoneme strategies. This hypothesis was tested in a cross-language blocking experiment using nonwords that could only be read using small-size grapheme–phoneme correspondences (small-unit nonwords) and phonologically identical nonwords that could be decoded using larger correspondences (large-unit nonwords). These small-unit and large-unit nonwords were either presented mixed together in the same lists or blocked by unit size. It was found that English children, but not German children, showed blocking effects (better performance when items were blocked by nonword type than in mixed lists). This suggests that in mixed lists, English readers have to switch back and forth between small-unit and large-unit processing, resulting in switching costs. These results are interpreted in terms of differences concerning the grain size of the phonological recoding mechanisms developed by English and German children.

Demonstrating a wordlikeness effect on nonword repetition performance in a conduction aphasic patient

The purpose of this study was to identify the nature of the deficit for a conduction aphasic patient in order to evaluate two different theories of conduction aphasia. First, a conduction aphasic patient FS was tested on auditory word-pair discrimination, word-repetition, and picture-naming. The results of these tasks indicated that her deficit was likely to be post-lexical rather than perceptual or lexical. Next, we examined her repetition performance for two types of nonwords (high-wordlike and low-wordlike nonwords) to distinguish the two theories. FS exhibited a wordlikeness effect: she produced more correct moras and more correct combinations of moras for high-wordlike nonwords than low-wordlike nonwords. We conclude that she had difficulty in maintaining stable phonological representations of verbal materials in the output buffer.

How brand names are special: brands, words, and hemispheres

Previous research has consistently shown differences between the processing of proper names and of common nouns, leading to the belief that proper names possess a special neuropsychological status. We investigate the category of brand names and suggest that brand names also have a special neuropsychological status, but one which is different from proper names. The findings suggest that the hemispheric lexical status of the brand names is mixed—they behave like words in some respects and like nonwords in others. Our study used familiar upper case brand names, common nouns, and two different types of nonwords (“weird” and “normal”) differing in length, as stimuli in a lateralized lexical decision task (LDT). Common nouns, brand names, weird nonwords, and normal nonwords were recognized in that decreasing order of speed and accuracy. A right visual field (RVF) advantage was found for all four lexical types. Interestingly, brand names, similar to nonwords, were found to be less lateralized than common nouns, consistent with theories of category-specific lexical processing. Further, brand names were the only type of lexical items to show a capitalization effect: brand names were recognized faster when they were presented in upper case than in lower case. In addition, while string length affected the recognition of common nouns only in the left visual field (LVF) and the recognition of nonwords only in the RVF, brand names behaved like common nouns in exhibiting length effects only in the LVF.

Schemas and Competing Paradigms in Swedish Plural Formation

According to autonomous descriptions of Swedish morphology, for the majority of nouns the gender of the lexeme and the phonological nature of the last segment or segments of the base form (indefinite singular) determine the inflectional category of the noun. The purpose of the present study is to find out if Swedish may resort to the use of larger shapes than the terminal segment or segments in the allegedly ambiguous monosyllabic CVC words. It has been shown in other languages—here giving English as an example—that items in semiproductive classes (like the English ablaut verbs string:strung and spin:spun) are associated via formal phonological links or bundles of links that constrain the manner in which native speakers pattern these form-to-form connections within morphological paradigms (see Bybee & Slobin, 1982; Bybee, 1985). The present wug-type experiment with legal nonwords was administered to three groups of children, i.e., 8- to 9-year-olds, 10- to 11-year-olds, and 15-year-olds. It was hypothesized that the ambiguous monosyllabic CVC lexemes would stabilize themselves slowly and late during language acquisition. The results show a vowel and consonant effect in the en-gender CVC nonwords. Swedish thus resorts to the use of larger shapes (schema analogies) than the terminal segment or segments. Moreover, a development of paradigm membership toward adultlike patterns is seen at late stages of language acquisition of both the ambiguous and the unambiguous nonword types.

Kanji Lexicality Effect in Partial Repetition Priming: The Relationship between Kanji Word and Kanji Character Processing

Two experiments are described using a partial repetition priming paradigm. The prime type was whether a kanji character is used as a word by itself (word type) or not (nonword type). This property is called kanji lexicality. In Experiment 1, the effect of kanji lexicality was not confirmed, although there was a tendency in the responses for word-type primes to be slower than those for nonword-type primes. In Experiment 2, the kanji lexicality effect depended upon the target familiarity, and no facilitation was obtained for high-familiarity words with word-type primes. The results were interpreted in terms of a modified interactive-activation framework.

Lexical Inhibition and Attentional Allocation during Speech Perception: Evidence from Phoneme Monitoring

The TRACE model (McClelland & Elman, 1986) predicts lexically-driven inhibition at the phonemic level. This is due to the combination of top-down excitatory connections from the lexical to the phonemic level, and inhibitory connections between competing units within the phonemic level. Frauenfelder, Segui, and Dijkstra (1990, Experiment 2) tested this prediction in French and found no evidence of such inhibition. Experiment 1 of the current study replicated their results with English stimuli: Instead of having longer reaction times (RTs), targets in Inhibiting Nonwords (INWs) were detected just as fast as targets in control nonwords. Our Experiment 2 improved the design of the original experiment by adding a more appropriate control condition, increasing the number of critical items, and employing balanced target locations and conditional target probabilities. Under these conditions, RTs to INWs were significantlyfasterthan baseline RTs, an effect opposite in direction to the hypothesized inhibition. Experiment 3 used a dual-task paradigm to examine the attentional demands of processing different types of nonwords. In addition to performing the phoneme monitoring task as before, subjects also monitored a pure tone for frequency modulations. The RT advantage for INWs was replicated in this experiment for both phoneme and modulation targets. In Experiment 4 we replicated the INW advantage for both phoneme and modulation targets, and found that the advantage disappeared for stimuli that carriedbothtypes of targets. The results suggest that both lexical inhibition and attentional allocation affect phoneme perception; their interaction can mask the effect of each.

Not all nonwords are alike: Implications for reading development and theory

Three experiments were designed to examine children's and adults' ability to pronounce consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense words. Some of the nonwords, like tain and goach, shared their VC unit with a number of real words. Other nonwords, like goan and taich, shared their VC unit with few or no real words. Pooling across items, the very same grapheme-phoneme correspondences occurred in the two types of nonwords. First graders, good and poor third grade readers, and adults all performed better on the nonwords with the more common VC units than on the nonwords with the less common VC units. Although readers appeared to use VC units in the pronunciation of nonwords, we did not find evidence for use of initial CV units. Implications of the results for reading development, dyslexia, and models of nonword pronunciation are discussed.

Frequency effects in the processing of lexicalized and novel nominal compounds

The processing of lexicalized and novel noun-noun compounds of high interpretability was investigated. In Experiment 1, the familiarity of the lexicalized compounds had a significant effect on lexical decision times, but no frequency effects were observed for the constituent nouns. In Experiment 2, a frequency effect was found for the first noun of novel compounds, but not for the second noun. This result was replicated in Experiment 3 with different types of nonwords. A negative word frequency effect for the first noun was found in Experiment 4 in which the novel compounds functioned as nonwords. A frequency effect for the first noun was also observed in Experiment 5, in which a semantic classification task was used. Results point to a decomposition second model according to which access is initially based on the whole compound. If this is unsuccessful the compound will be decomposed and the constituent nouns will be processed separately. It is argued that in novel compounds, nouns are processed sequentially, and different orders of processing are discussed.

Influence of hedonic tone on lexical decisions

A lexical decision task was used to investigate the effect of a word’s hedonic tone on decision time. Thirty words, varying in degrees of pleasantness, were randomly presented with 30 nonwords, half of which were pronounceable and half not. It was demonstrated that decision times for the pleasant words were significantly faster than for the unpleasant words. The two types of nonwords were also found to differ: Decision times for the pronounceable nonwords were significantly slower than for the nonpronounceables. Results are discussed in the light of previous work in both memory and perception. The utility of the lexical decision task for relevant future research is also considered.

Influence of hedonic tone on lexical decisions

A lexical decision task was used to investigate the effect of a word’s hedonic tone on decision time. Thirty words, varying in degrees of pleasantness, were randomly presented with 30 nonwords, half of which were pronounceable and half not. It was demonstrated that decision times for the pleasant words were significantly faster than for the unpleasant words. The two types of nonwords were also found to differ: Decision times for the pronounceable nonwords were significantly slower than for the nonpronounceables. Results are discussed in the light of previous work in both memory and perception. The utility of the lexical decision task for relevant future research is also considered.