Word Recognition Processes Research Articles

INVESTIGATING READING COMPREHENSION PROCESSES IN ESP EDUCATION

Reading is regarded as a cognitive process of meaning construction, or an interactive process that comprises low-level processes of word recognition and high-level processing of ideas. Schema theory implies the meaning of а text is not embedded in the text itself; it is actually created in an active manner through interaction between the reader and the text, in which readers use their world knowledge to decode text meaning. Accordingly, readers bring their ideas, experience and previously gained knowledge into reading comprehension processes. The attainment of specific reading goals, including main idea comprehension and extracting specific information from the text, requires the employment of various reading strategies. In that sense, strategic behavior is deployed by proficient readers; it enables them to facilitate and improve text comprehension, which is the ultimate aim of the reading skill. 10 ESP students of the College of Applied Professional Studies in Vranje took part in this research as respondents. After completing their reading comprehension assignments, students reported on those tasks by virtue of think-aloud protocols. This type of research may provide an insight into specific problems students encounter during text processing activities, as well as strategies they employ to resolve them, which would facilitate the evaluation of reading performance and progress monitoring. The results imply that strategic training would enable ESP students to efficiently attain both general and specific reading goals.

The impact of emotional content on pseudoword recognition

The present study investigates the influence of emotional information on language processing. To this aim, we measured behavioral responses and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during four Italian lexical decision experiments in which we used emotionally intense and neutral pseudowords—i.e., pseudowords derived from changing one letter in a word (e.g., cammelto, derived from cammello ‘camel’ vs. copezzolo, from capezzolo ‘nipple’)—as stimuli. In Experiment 1 and 2, half of the pseudowords were emotionally intense and half were neutral, and were mixed with neutral words. In Experiment 3, the list composition was manipulated, with ¼ of the pseudowords being derived from emotionally intense words and ¾ derived from neutral words. Experiment 4 was identical to Experiment 1, but ERPs were recorded. Emotionally intense pseudowords were categorized more slowly than neutral pseudowords, with the difference emerging both in the mean and at the leading edge of the response times distribution. Moreover, emotionally intense pseudowords elicited smaller N170 and N400 than neutral pseudowords. These results speak in favor of a fast and multi-level infiltration of the emotional information into the linguistic process of word recognition.

THE EFFECT OF LEARNING CONTEXT ON L2 LISTENING DEVELOPMENT

AbstractLittle research has been done on the effect of learning context on L2 listening development. Motivated by DeKeyser’s (2015) skill acquisition theory of second language acquisition, this study compares L2 listening development in study abroad (SA) and at home (AH) contexts from both language knowledge and processing perspectives. One hundred forty-nine Chinese postgraduates studying in either China or the United Kingdom participated in a battery of listening tasks at the beginning and at the end of an academic year. These tasks measure auditory vocabulary knowledge and listening processing efficiency (i.e., accuracy, speed, and stability of processing) in word recognition, grammatical processing, and semantic analysis. Results show that, provided equal starting levels, the SA learners made more progress than the AH learners in speed of processing across the language processing tasks, with less clear results for vocabulary acquisition. Studying abroad may be an effective intervention for L2 learning, especially in terms of processing speed.

Challenges and insights for the visual system: Are face and word recognition two sides of the same coin?

Both word and face recognition processes are related to the fusiform gyrus which is located in the temporal and occipital lobes of the brain. Although both processes present several similarities, there are also remarkable differences between word and face recognition processes. These differences include a vast range of approaches and result from different groups of participants. However, how dissociated or overlapped these processes are continues to be a topic of debate. This study reviewed whether human face and word recognition require special use of attentional mechanisms is examined, including its distribution and temporal stages of processing conceptual issues such as grand challenges or future lines of research are revisited for these two recognition processes. The main insight is focused on the role of specialization for each process, which rather than being independent, might be bilaterally distributed with some preferences. • Face recognition might be not as an innate process as it was believed. • Face recognition present a remarkable advantage for word recognition over categorization processes. • As these areas have been described as parts of other circuitry networks, rather than being independent, these might be bilaterally distributed with some gradual specializations or preferences. • Longitudinal studies in developing readers might be imperative to understanding individual differences.

Morphosemantic activation of opaque Chinese words in sentence comprehension

Two cross-modal priming experiments were conducted to investigate morphological processing in Chinese spoken word recognition during sentence comprehension. Participants heard sentences that contained opaque prime words and performed lexical decisions on visual targets that were related to second morpheme meanings of opaque words or whole-word meanings. The targets were presented at the auditory onset of the second morphemes or the subsequent syllables after the opaque primes to examine the time course of effects. In a neutral sentence context (Experiment 1), opaque word morpheme meanings produced morphological priming on target word recognition, which preceded lexical priming. When context biased toward whole opaque words (Experiment 2), morphological priming disappeared, while the effect of lexical meanings remained significant and emerged earlier than the effect of lexical meanings in the neutral context. These findings suggest that morphemes play a role in Chinese spoken word recognition, but their effects depend on the prior context during sentence comprehension.

PSYCHO-LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

The relationship between language and psychology is one of the most complex and close relationships, as human nature itself is. Language, as the identifying phenomenon of man and the only means of realizing human communication, is as biological, psychological as well as social. The relationship between biological, psychological, and social in the language is one of the most important. To understand the full complexity of this report, it is important to study the relationship between discourse and language, not only in the normal state (in people with normal, biological, psychological, and neurological abilities) but also in people with different abilities. Before presenting the findings of a one-year observation to some children with different abilities, it would be appropriate to put forward some theoretical questions on the relation of language and discourse, the brain's process of speech recognition as neuro-psychological images are created, neuro-psychological knowledge of sentence syntactic structures, word recognition process, etc. All these and other reports are descriptive of human psycholinguistic development at different ages and with different cognitive and behavioral abilities.

The relationship between phonemic category boundary changes and perceptual adjustments to natural accents.

People often experience difficulties when they first hear a novel accent. Prior research has shown that relatively fast natural accent accommodation can occur. However, there has been little investigation of the underlying perceptual mechanism that drives the learning. The current study examines whether phonemic boundary changes play a central role in natural accent accommodation. Two well-established boundary shifting phenomena were used here-recalibration and selective adaptation-to index the flexibility of phonemic category boundaries. Natural accent accommodation was measured with a task in which listeners heard accented words and nonwords before and after listening to English sentences produced by one of two native Mandarin Chinese speakers with moderate accents. In two experiments, participants completed recalibration, selective adaptation, and natural accent accommodation tasks focusing on a consonant contrast that is difficult for native Chinese speakers to produce. We found that: (a) On the accent accommodation task, participants showed an increased endorsement of accented/mispronounced words after exposure to a speaker's accented speech, indicating a potential relaxation of criteria in the word recognition process; (b) There was no strong link between recalibrating phonemic boundaries and natural accent accommodation; (c) There was no significant correlation between recalibration and selective adaptation. These results suggest that recalibration of phonemic boundaries does not play a central role in natural accent accommodation. Instead, there is some evidence suggesting that natural accent accommodation involves a relaxation of phonemic categorization criteria. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

An orthographic prediction error as the basis for efficient visual word recognition

Most current models assume that the perceptual and cognitive processes of visual word recognition and reading operate upon neuronally coded domain-general low-level visual representations – typically oriented line representations. We here demonstrate, consistent with neurophysiological theories of Bayesian-like predictive neural computations, that prior visual knowledge of words may be utilized to ‘explain away’ redundant and highly expected parts of the visual percept. Subsequent processing stages, accordingly, operate upon an optimized representation of the visual input, the orthographic prediction error, highlighting only the visual information relevant for word identification. We show that this optimized representation is related to orthographic word characteristics, accounts for word recognition behavior, and is processed early in the visual processing stream, i.e., in V4 and before 200 ​ms after word-onset. Based on these findings, we propose that prior visual-orthographic knowledge is used to optimize the representation of visually presented words, which in turn allows for highly efficient reading processes.

汉语复合词视觉识别的时间进程：基于同形语素的行为与ERP证据

汉语复合词视觉识别的时间进程：基于同形语素的行为与ERP证据

Assessing low-level cognitive processes of word recognition

A fundamental skill required for vocabulary development is word recognition ability. According to Perfetti (1985), word recognition ability relies on low-level cognitive processing skill to be automatic and efficient in order for cognitive resources to be allocated to high-level processes such as inferencing and schemata activation needed for reading comprehension. The low-level processes include orthographic knowledge, semantic knowledge, and phonological awareness. These low-level processes must be efficient, fluent, and automatic in second language readers in order for them to achieve the ultimate goal of reading comprehension. This article briefly describes the concept of word recognition, its relation to vocabulary, and three tests that were designed to measure the three components of word recognition (orthographic, semantic, and phonological knowledge) in a longitudinal study that investigated the effects of word recognition training on reading comprehension.

Song and infant-directed speech facilitate word learning.

Two separate lines of research have examined the influence of song and infant-directed speech (IDS-a speech register that includes some melodic features) on language learning, suggesting that the use of musical attributes in speech input can enhance language learning. However, the benefits of these two types of stimuli have never been directly compared. In this investigation, we compared the effects of song and IDS for immediate word learning and long-term memory of the learned words. This study examines whether the highly musical stimuli (i.e., song) would facilitate language learning more than the less musical stimuli (i.e., IDS). English-speaking adults were administered a word learning task, with Mandarin Chinese words presented in adult-directed speech (ADS), IDS, or song. Participants' word learning performance was assessed immediately after the word learning task (immediate word learning) and then 1 day later (long-term memory). Results showed that both song and IDS facilitated immediate word learning and long-term memory of the words; however, this facilitative effect did not differ between IDS and song, suggesting that the relationship between the degree of musicality and language learning performance is not linear. In addition, song and IDS were found to facilitate the word association process (mapping a label to its referent) rather than the word recognition process. Finally, participants' confidence in their answers might not differ among ADS, IDS, and sung words.

Individual differences in reading: Separable effects of reading experience and processing skill.

A large-scale eye-tracking study examined individual variability in measures of word recognition during reading among 546 college students, focusing on two established individual-differences measures: the Author Recognition Test (ART) and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN). ART and RAN were only slightly correlated, suggesting that the two tasks reflect independent cognitive abilities in this large sample of participants. Further, individual variability in ART and RAN scores were related to distinct facets of word-recognition processes. Higher ART scores were associated with increased skipping rates, shorter gaze duration, and reduced effects of word frequency on gaze duration, suggesting that this measure reflects efficiency of basic processes of word recognition during reading. In contrast, faster times on RAN were associated with enhanced foveal-on-parafoveal effects, fewer first-pass regressions, and shorter second-pass reading times, suggesting that this measure reflects efficient coordination of perceptual-motor and attentional processing during reading. These results demonstrate that ART and RAN tasks make independent contributions to predicting variability in word-recognition processes during reading.

Visual Speech Recognition for Daily Indonesian Words Based on Combination of Double Difference and Image Projection Method

In visual speech recognition, there are two approaches to lip feature extraction, which are based on appearance and shape. The appearance-based approach is usually better, because it provides visual features that not only include lip structure but also the visibility of the teeth and tongue. However, the disadvantage of this approach is that it produces too many features. Integration of double difference and horizontal-vertical image projection, is part of the appearance approach, in addition to using image projection as dimensional reduction. In previous study, the method has succeeded in recognizing 5 daily indonesian words, with data in form of videos recorded inside the room. In this study, we used the same words with 5 additional new words recorded outside the room. MLP (Multi Layer Perceptron) and SVM (Support Vector Machine) are used as classifiers. The word recognition process is evaluated using 10-fold cross validation. The method tested reached 88.92% on classification accuracy and 0.9948 on AUC (Area Under ROC Curve).

Reading Text When Studying in a Second Language: An Eye‐Tracking Study

ABSTRACTThe authors investigated how eye movements are influenced by different reading goals in participants’ first (L1) and second language (L2). Participants read or studied the contents of texts while their eye movements were recorded. One group was asked to read L1 and L2 texts as they would read any expository text (informational reading). Another group was asked to study L1 and L2 texts for subsequent tests involving true/false questions (study condition). After reading, all participants, including those in the informational reading condition, completed the true/false tests without being able to further consult the texts, which allowed the authors to investigate the extent to which reading goal and text language affect recognition memory for texts. In general, more reading time was spent on studying than on informational reading, which also resulted in higher test scores in the study condition. The L2‐processing cost was larger in the study condition than in the informational reading condition: Participants needed approximately 20% more time to study L2 texts. The results of various eye movement measures suggest that this is caused by slower word recognition processes and a smaller amount of information that can be processed simultaneously in L2. This was true not only for the first reading of the text but also for the rereadings in the study condition. Interestingly, the additional time for L2 studying seemed to compensate for the less efficient processing, as the recognition test scores were the same in L2 as in L1.

Word Frequency Effect in Lexical Decision Task: Evidence from Khalkha Mongolian

In experimental psycholinguistics, one clue into the architecture of lexical memory comes from the presence of robust frequency effects in lexical decision task (LDT), in which subjects judge whether a written stimulus is a real word or a nonword, and processing complexity is measured by reaction time (RT). For example, in LDT the visual word recognition process is facilitated (or inhibited) by word frequency as measured from the representative corpus. Our study verifies the word frequency effect in standard (“yes/no task”) LDT performed by Khalkha Mongolian subjects. The results showed strong weight of word frequency as RTs predictor (R2 = .631, F (1, 28) = 50.57, p < .000, β = .802, t = 7.111, p < .000). Our experimental results also correspond to experimental findings on word frequency effects for Japanese Katakana (syllabic) and Kanji (logographic) words in standard LDT. Such lexical decision “script moderation” could be the actual clue for further LDT experiments (e. g., relatively “deep” Mongolian script vs. “shallow” Cyrillic Mongolian)

The role of long-distance phonological processes in spoken word recognition: A preliminary investigation

Previous work has demonstrated that during spoken word recognition, listeners can use a variety of cues to anticipate an upcoming sound before the sound is encountered. However, this vein of research has largely focused on local phenomena that hold between adjacent sounds. In order to fill this gap, we combine the Visual World Paradigm with an Artificial Language Learning methodology to investigate whether knowledge of a long-distance pattern of sibilant harmony can be utilized during spoken word recognition. The hypothesis was that participants trained on sibilant harmony could more quickly identify a target word from among a set of competitors when that target contained a prefix which had undergone regressive sibilant harmony. Participants tended to behave as expected for the subset of items that they saw during training, but the effect did not reach statistical significance and did not extend to novel items. This suggests that participants did not learn the rule of sibilant harmony and may have been memorizing which base went with which alternant. Failure to learn the pattern may have been due to certain aspects of the design, which will be addressed in future iterations of the experiment.

The time course of age-of-acquisition effects on eye movements during reading: Evidence from survival analyses.

Adults process words that are rated as being learned earlier in life faster than words that are rated as being acquired later in life. This age-of-acquisition (AoA) effect has been observed in a variety of word-recognition tasks when word frequency is controlled. AoA has also previously been found to influence fixation durations when words are embedded into sentences and eye movements are recorded. However, the time course of AoA effects during reading has been inconsistent across studies. The current study further explored the time course of AoA effects on distributions of first-fixation durations during reading. Early and late acquired words were embedded into matched neutral sentence frames. Participants read the sentences while their eye movements were recorded. AoA effects were observed in both early and late fixation duration measures, suggesting that AoA has an early and long-lasting effect on word-recognition processes during reading. Survival analysis revealed that the earliest discernable effect of AoA on distributions of first-fixation durations emerged beginning at 158 ms. This rapid influence of AoA was confirmed through the use of Vincentile plots, which demonstrated that the effect of AoA occurred early and was relatively consistent across the distribution of fixations. This pattern of results provides support for the direct lexical-control hypothesis, as well as the viewpoint that AoA may exert an influence at multiple loci within the mental lexicon.

Visual and orthographic processing in Arabic word recognition among dyslexic and typical readers

The main objective of this research was to assess the influence of visual processing on Arabic reading accuracy and fluency of word recognition in a deep (unvowelled) version and a shallow (vowelle...

The graded effect of valence on word recognition in Spanish.

The influence of emotional content on language processing remains unclear. Previous research conducted in English has obtained contradictory results regarding the effects of valence on word recognition. Whereas some studies indicate that valence predicts recognition latencies such that negative words are processed more slowly than positive words, other studies indicate facilitation of responses to emotional (both positive and negative) compared to neutral words. The authors examined the influence of valence and arousal on word recognition reaction time (RT) using large-scale word naming and lexical decision data-sets in Spanish. They found that linear mixed-effects model estimates revealed a valence but not an arousal effect on reading latencies. The influence of valence was better captured by a graded (RTs to positive words < neutral < negative) than by a categorical (positive < negative) valence effect. A categorical emotional versus neutral effect was not reliably observed. In an advance on previous research, the authors' analyses showed that the valence effect is substantially more prominent in lexical decision than in pronunciation. These results mirror some of those reported previously in English, adding evidence to support their validity, and demonstrating important parallels in word recognition processes in orthographically shallow as well as deep languages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Comprehension strategies used by the Islamic senior high school students during shadow reading

This research aims at finding out comprehension strategies used by the students during shadow reading. This research is qualitative research with classroom observation. This research is based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory that involves scaffolding and zone of proximal development (ZPD). The data is analyzed through problem-solving as comprehension analysis. The comprehension strategies are focused on three aspects of reading namely phonological processing, word recognition, and syntactical processing. This research is restricted to the interactional phase of shadow reading and focused during reading only. The result shows that from those three focuses, there are six comprehension strategies. In the phonological processing, there are repairing incorrect utterance of partner and dividing a word into manageable sound. In the word recognition, there are implicitly asking for repetition to complete the task and giving repetition for incorrect word. In the syntactical processing, there are modifying input in manageable repetition and explicitly requesting repetition to complete the task. Those strategies help the shadower to complete the task. Thus they can reach ZPD.