Stages Of Visual Word Recognition Research Articles

Just a mark: Diacritic function does not play a role in the early stages of visual word recognition.

A very common feature in most writing systems is the presence of diacritics: distinguishing marks that are added for various linguistic reasons. Most models of reading, however, have not yet captured the nature of these marks. Recent priming experiments in several languages have attempted to resolve how diacritical letters are represented in the visual word recognition system. Since the function and appearance of diacritics can change from one language to the other, it is hard to interpret the accumulated evidence. With this in mind, we conducted two masked priming lexical decision experiments in Hungarian, a transparent orthography with a wide use of diacritic vowels that allows for clear-cut manipulations. In the two experiments, we manipulated the presence or absence of the same diacritic (i.e., the acute accent) on two specific sets of letters that behave differently. In Experiment 1, the manipulation changed only the length of vowels, whereas in Experiment 2, it also changed the quality (e.g., a↝/ɒ/ vs. á↝/aː/). In both experiments, we found that primes with an omitted diacritic work just as good as the identity primes (nema→NÉMA = néma→NÉMA [mute]), whereas the addition of a diacritic comes with a cost (mése→MESE > mese→MESE [tale]). This asymmetry favors a purely perceptual account of the very early stages of word recognition, making it blind to the function of diacritics. We suggest that the linguistic functions of diacritics originate at later processing stages.

Neural correlates of confusability in recognition of morphologically complex Korean words.

When people confuse and reject a non-word that is created by switching two adjacent letters from an actual word, is called the transposition confusability effect (TCE). The TCE is known to occur at the very early stages of visual word recognition with such unit exchange as letters or syllables, but little is known about the brain mechanisms of TCE. In this study, we examined the neural correlates of TCE and the effect of a morpheme boundary placement on TCE. We manipulated the placement of a morpheme boundary by exchanging places of two syllables embedded in Korean morphologically complex words made up of lexical morpheme and grammatical morpheme. In the two experimental conditions, the transposition syllable within-boundary condition (TSW) involved exchanging two syllables within the same morpheme, whereas the across-boundary condition (TSA) involved the exchange of syllables across the stem and grammatical morpheme boundary. During fMRI, participants performed the lexical decision task. Behavioral results revealed that the TCE was found in TSW condition, and the morpheme boundary, which is manipulated in TSA, modulated the TCE. In the fMRI results, TCE induced activation in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS). The IPS activation was specific to a TCE and its strength of activation was associated with task performance. Furthermore, two functional networks were involved in the TCE: the central executive network and the dorsal attention network. Morpheme boundary modulation suppressed the TCE by recruiting the prefrontal and temporal regions, which are the key regions involved in semantic processing. Our findings propose the role of the dorsal visual pathway in syllable position processing and that its interaction with other higher cognitive systems is modulated by the morphological boundary in the early phases of visual word recognition.

The mirror reflects more for genial than for casual: right-asymmetry bias on the visual word recognition of words containing non-reversal letters

Soares, Lages, Oliveira, and Cabrera-Hernandez (2019) recently showed that the mirror-letter interference effect observed for words containing reversal letters was reliable for words containing left-oriented mirror-letters as ‘d’, but not for words containing right-oriented mirror-letters as ‘b’, thus indicating that the directionality of the reversal letters cannot be disregarded when examining the cost of suppressing the mirror-generalization mechanism at the early stages of visual word recognition. Here we examined whether this bias can also be observed for left-oriented non-reversal letters such as ‘g’, ‘j’, and ‘z’, which just as ‘d’ are also prone to errors in writing in left-to-right orthographies as European Portuguese (EP). Thirty-six EP skilled readers performed a lexical decision task combined with a masked-priming paradigm in which target words containing either left-oriented (e.g., ‘g’, genial) or right-oriented (e.g., ‘c’, casual) non-reversal letters were preceded by 50 ms primes that could be the same as the target (genial–genial, casual–casual), nonword primes in which the critical letter was replaced by the mirror-image of the left- or right-oriented non-reversal letter ( enial–genial, asual–casual), or nonword primes in which the critical letter was replaced by the mirror-image of another left-oriented or right-oriented non-reversal letter as control ( enial-genial, asual-casual). Results showed that the amount of priming produced by identity primes and mirror-image primes was virtually the same for words with left-oriented (e.g., genial–genial = enial–genial), but not for words with right-oriented non-reversal letters (e.g., casual–casual > asual–casual), hence extending the right-oriented bias observed for words containing reversal letters to words containing non-reversal letters.

Syllable effects in beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese readers: Evidence from a sandwich masked go/no-go lexical decision task.

Reading is one of the most important milestones a child achieves throughout development. Above the letter level, the syllable has been shown to play a relevant role at early stages of visual word recognition in adult skilled readers. However, studies aiming to examine when, during reading acquisition, the syllable emerges as a functional sublexical unit are scarce, and the studies conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. In this work, beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese (EP) developing readers performed a sandwich masked lexical decision task in which CV (e.g., RU.MOR[rumour]) and CVC (e.g., CIS.NE[swan]) first-syllable EP words were preceded either by syllable congruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, cis.ra-CIS.NE), syllable incongruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, ci.ser-CIS.NE), unrelated (e.g., va.cra-RU.MOR, zar.vo-CIS.NE) pseudowords primes, or identity (e.g., ru.mour-RU.MOUR, cis.ne-CIS.NE) primes. Results showed reliable syllable effects only for intermediate readers and for CV and CVC words alike. Findings are discussed attending to current models of visual word recognition.

The role of letter features on the consonant-bias effect: Evidence from masked priming

Recent research has shown an advantage of consonants at early stages of visual word recognition (C-bias), although the locus of this effect remains elusive. Here we examine whether the C-bias is affected by the consonant letters' features. Skilled readers performed a masked priming lexical decision task in which target words containing only either consonants without any ascending/descending features (flat words, canino[canine]) or consonants with ascending/descending features (non-flat words, palito[toothpick]) were preceded by briefly (50 ms) presented primes that could preserve the same consonants of the targets (cenune-CANINO, pelute-PALITO), the same vowels of the targets (raxizo-CANINO, fajibo-PALITO), or, as controls, unrelated (ruxuze-CANINO, fejube-PALITO) and identity primes (canino-CANINO, palito-PALITO). The case in which prime-target pairs were presented was also manipulated (lower-upper vs. upper-lower). Results showed that in both case conditions flat words were recognized faster than non-flat words. Evidence for the C-bias was observed both for flat and non-flat words in the lower-upper condition, in which a vowel inhibitory priming effect was also observed for non-flat words. In the upper-lower condition, however, the C-bias was restricted to flat words. These findings suggest that letter features play a role in the C-bias and ask for amendments in current models of visual word recognition.

The time course of the lowercase advantage in visual word recognition: An ERP investigation

Previous word identification and sentence reading experiments have consistently shown faster reading for lowercase than for uppercase words (e.g., table faster than TABLE). A theoretically relevant question for neural models of word recognition is whether the effect of letter-case only affects the early prelexical stages of visual word recognition or whether it also influences lexical-semantic processing. To examine the locus and nature of the lowercase advantage in visual word recognition, we conducted an event-related potential (ERP) lexical decision experiment. ERPs were recorded to words and pseudowords presented in lowercase or uppercase. Words also varied in lexical frequency, thus allowing us to assess the time-course of perceptual (letter-case) and lexical-semantic (word-frequency) processing. Together with a lowercase advantage in word recognition times, results showed that letter-case influenced early perceptual components (N/P150), whereas word frequency influenced lexical-semantic components (N400). These findings are consistent with those models of written word recognition that assume that letter-case information from the visual input is quickly mapped onto the case-invariant letter and word units that drive lexical access.

Case mixing impedes early lexical access: converging evidence from the masked priming paradigm.

When letters are presented in mixed case (e.g., "PlAnE), word recognition is slowed. This case-mixing effect has been used to argue that early stages of word recognition operate holistically (on the entire visual word form) rather than merely letter-by-letter. Contrary to this holistic view, however, a masked priming study (Perea, Vergara-Martínez, & Gomez, Cognition 142:39-43, 2015) with Spanish words argued that case mixing has no effect on early stages of visual word recognition. Their participants made lexical decisions on an uppercase target (e.g., "PLANE") preceded by an identical prime (e.g., "plane") or an unrelated prime (e.g.,"music"), presented in lowercase or mixed case. Because priming effects (unrelated-identical) were unaffected by case mixing, they concluded that case mixing does not impede early lexical access. We examined whether this finding applies to English words, while also including lowercase targets to prevent a strong bias against holistic word recognition. We found larger priming effects from lowercase primes than mixed-case primes regardless of target case (lowercase vs. uppercase) and whether target case was variedwithin blocks(Experiment 1) or between blocks(Experiment 2). Contrary to Perea et al.'s findings for Spanish, our results suggest an early locus for the case-mixing effect, consistent with theholisticview of word recognition.

Semantic constraint, reading control, and the granularity of form-based expectations during semantic processing: Evidence from ERPs

We investigated the role that semantic constraint and participant control over stimulus presentation have on early stages of visual word recognition. Namely, we tested how the presence of a highly constraining sentential context influences the expectations that readers have during incremental sentence processing. Further, we tested whether allowing participants to self-pace the experiment affected early sensory perceptions of written stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in three experiments. Participants read sentences containing a target word from one of four conditions: 1) the target, spelled as expected; 2) the target with two internal characters transposed; 3) a nonword one vowel different from a target; or 4) an illegal consonant string. In Experiment 1, sentences were minimally constraining up to the target word (average cloze at target word: 0.01); in Experiments 2 and 3, sentences were highly constraining (average cloze at target word: 0.93). In both Experiments 1 and 2, sentences were presented using rapid-serial-visual presentation (RSVP). In Experiment 3, participants saw the same sentences used in Experiment 2 but were allowed to self-pace the presentation of each word in every trial. In Experiments 1 and 2, results showed early neural sensitivity to nonsensical consonant strings only, and only when they appeared within high constraint. In Experiment 3, results showed graded N170 effects to all target words containing unexpected visual information. P600 modulations were observed in all three experiments, indexing the difficulty of processing unexpected orthography, particularly in downstream, integrative processing. Results support a nuanced view of early visual processing, namely one arguing that visual processing is more fine-grained the more control participants have over how they read.

The Dopamine Receptor D2 C957T Polymorphism Modulates Early Components of Event-Related Potentials in Visual Word Recognition Task

Background: Visual word recognition is one of the central topics in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Genetic factors are known to contribute to the visual word recognition, but no genes associated with this process have been identified so far. We studied the impact of the DRD2 C957T polymorphism on the efficiency of visual word recognition by measuring its neuronal correlates and behavioral parameters. Early (~200 ms) components of event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded during a lexical decision task. The DRD2 C957T polymorphism is thought to be associated with D2 receptor’s availability and binding potential. Earlier studies have demonstrated the influence of this variation on perception and processing of verbal stimuli. The DRD2 C957T is also associated with schizophrenia, with the C allele being the risk allele. Methods: Electroencephalogram, genetic, and behavioral data were collected from 96 healthy individuals (53.1% men). ERPs were recorded for words and pseudowords in implicit and explicit tasks. Two regions of interests in the left ventral temporal cortex, whose role in early visual word processing is well established, were selected for analysis. Results: The results showed the main effect of the DRD2 C957T polymorphism on P200 amplitude. Carriers of the TT genotype had higher P200 amplitudes compared to subjects with schizophrenia risk C allele. Within-group comparisons demonstrated a better ability to adjust attention to orthographic stimuli depending on task demands and lexicality in the TT group. Conclusion: The results of the study suggest that the DRD2 C957T polymorphism modulates early stages of visual word recognition.

The role of syllables in intermediate-depth stress-timed languages: masked priming evidence in European Portuguese

The role of syllables as a sublexical unit in visual word recognition and reading is well established in deep and shallow syllable-timed languages such as French and Spanish, respectively. However, its role in intermediate stress-timed languages remains unclear. This paper aims to overcome this gap by studying for the first time the role of syllables at early stages of visual word recognition in Portuguese (European), a language where the spelling-sound correspondences are less transparent than Spanish but less opaque than French, and also with fuzzier syllabic boundaries than both languages. To that purpose, 36 native speakers of Portuguese performed a lexical decision task combined with a masked priming paradigm. Ninety-six dissyllabic Portuguese target words, and 96 nonwords, half of which with a CV (ru.mor [rumor]) and the other half with a CVC first-syllable structure (forno [oven]), were preceded by a briefly presented nonword prime (50 ms) that could be syllable congruent (e.g., ru.mis-RU.MOR, for.pa-FOR.NO), syllable incongruent (e.g., rum.pa-RU.MOR, fo.rou-FOR.NO), or unrelated (e.g., ca.fas-RU.MOR, pou.me-FOR.NO) with the targets. Results were clear-cut and showed a facilitative syllabic priming effect in Portuguese, as target words preceded by syllable congruent primes were recognized faster and more accurately than when preceded either by incongruent or unrelated primes, although the effect was restricted to CV words. For nonwords there were no signs of syllabic effects. The findings are discussed attending to the characteristics of the Portuguese language and to current models of visual word recognition.

Do 'blacheap' and 'subcheap' both prime 'cheap'? An investigation of morphemic status and position in early visual word processing.

Much research suggests that words comprising more than one morpheme are decomposed into morphemes in the early stages of visual word recognition. In the present masked primed lexical decision study, we investigated whether or not decomposition occurs for both prefixed and suffixed nonwords and for nonwords which comprise a stem and a non-morphemic ending. Prime-target relatedness was manipulated in three ways: (1) primes shared a semantically transparent morphological relationship with the target (e.g., subcheap-CHEAP, cheapize-CHEAP); (2) primes comprised targets and non-affixal letter strings (e.g., blacheap-CHEAP, cheapstry-CHEAP); and (3) primes were real, complex words unrelated to the target (e.g., miscall-CHEAP, idealism-CHEAP). Both affixed and non-affixed nonwords significantly facilitated the recognition of their stem targets, suggesting that embedded stems are activated independently of whether they are accompanied by a real affix or a non-affix. There was no difference in priming between stems being embedded in initial and final string positions, indicating that embedded stem activation is position-independent. Finally, more priming was observed in the semantically interpretable affixed condition than in the non-affixed condition, which points to a semantic licensing mechanism during complex novel word processing.

Early use of phonological codes in deaf readers: An ERP study

Previous studies suggest that deaf readers use phonological information of words when it is explicitly demanded by the task itself. However, whether phonological encoding is automatic remains controversial. The present experiment examined whether adult congenitally deaf readers show evidence of automatic use of phonological information during visual word recognition. In an ERP masked priming lexical decision experiment, deaf participants responded to target words preceded by a pseudohomophone (koral – CORAL) or an orthographic control prime (toral – CORAL). Responses were faster for the pseudohomophone than for the orthographic control condition. The N250 and N400 amplitudes were reduced for the pseudohomophone when compared to the orthographic control condition. Furthermore, the magnitude of both the behavioral and the ERP pseudohomophone effects in deaf readers was similar to that of a group of well-matched hearing controls. These findings reveal that phonological encoding is available to deaf readers from the early stages of visual word recognition. Finally, the pattern of correlations of phonological priming with reading ability suggested that the amount of sub-lexical use of phonological information could be a main contributor to reading ability for hearing but not for deaf readers.

Top-down modulation of early print-tuned neural activity in reading.

Fast neural tuning to print has been found within the first 250ms of stimulus processing across different writing systems, indicated by larger N1 negativity in the ERP to words (or characters) compared to control stimuli, such as symbols. However, whether print tuning effects can be modulated by task demands at early stages of visual word recognition is still under debate. To further explore this issue, an ERP study in Chinese was conducted. Familiar, high-frequency, left/right-structured Chinese characters and unfamiliar, stroke number-matched symbols (Korean characters) were used as stimulus conditions. While viewing the characters and symbols, 20 native Chinese speakers performed three tasks: delayed naming, repetition detection, and blue color detection. Results from occipito-temporal and whole map analyses suggest that the influence of task on print tuning changes throughout the N1. Accordingly in the N1 onset, a print tuning main effect was found, with a stronger N1 to words than symbols, irrespective of task. In the N1 offset, a print-by-task interaction reflected a more negative N1 to symbols than words in both delayed naming and color detection, but not in the repetition detection. After the N1 an N2 was observed with task and condition main effects at the whole map level. Taken together, the current study provides evidence that neural tuning to print is modulated by task demands already within the first 250ms, suggesting that early visual-orthographic processing may be less automatic than it was thought, and the possible top-down modulation may be much faster than it was previously assumed.

Phonological-Lexical Feedback during Early Abstract Encoding: The Case of Deaf Readers

In the masked priming technique, physical identity between prime and target enjoys an advantage over nominal identity in nonwords (GEDA-GEDA faster than geda-GEDA). However, nominal identity overrides physical identity in words (e.g., REAL-REAL similar to real-REAL). Here we tested whether the lack of an advantage of the physical identity condition for words was due to top-down feedback from phonological-lexical information. We examined this issue with deaf readers, as their phonological representations are not as fully developed as in hearing readers. Results revealed that physical identity enjoyed a processing advantage over nominal identity not only in nonwords but also in words (GEDA-GEDA faster than geda-GEDA; REAL-REAL faster than real-REAL). This suggests the existence of fundamental differences in the early stages of visual word recognition of hearing and deaf readers, possibly related to the amount of feedback from higher levels of information.

Where are emotions in words? Functional localization of valence effects in visual word recognition.

Where are emotions in words? Functional localization of valence effects in visual word recognition.

Parallel Processing of Whole Words and Morphemes in Visual Word Recognition

Models of morphological processing make different predictions about whether morphologically complex written words are initially decomposed and recognized on the basis of their morphemic subunits or whether they can directly be accessed as whole words and at what point semantics begin to influence morphological processing. In this study, we used unprimed and masked primed lexical decision to compare truly suffixed (darkest) and pseudosuffixed words (glossary) with within-boundary (drakest/golssary) to across-boundary (darekst/glosasry) letter transpositions. Significant transposed-letter similarity effects were found independently of the morphological position of the letter transposition, demonstrating that, in English, morphologically complex whole-word representations can be directly accessed at initial word processing stages. In a third masked primed lexical decision experiment, the same materials were used in the context of stem target priming, and it was found that truly suffixed primes facilitate the recognition of their stem-target (darkest-DARK) to the same extent as pseudosuffixed primes (glossary-GLOSS), which is consistent with theories of early morpho-orthographic decomposition. Taken together, our findings provide evidence for both whole-word access and morphological decomposition at initial stages of visual word recognition and are discussed in the context of a hybrid account.

Depth of Conceptual Knowledge Modulates Visual Processes during Word Reading

Recent evidence suggests that conceptual knowledge modulates early visual stages of object recognition. The present study investigated whether similar modulations can be observed also for the recognition of object names, that is, for symbolic representations with only arbitrary relationships between their visual features and the corresponding conceptual knowledge. In a learning paradigm, we manipulated the amount of information provided about initially unfamiliar visual objects while controlling for perceptual stimulus properties and exposure. In a subsequent test session with electroencephalographic recordings, participants performed several tasks on either the objects or their written names. For objects as well as names, knowledge effects were observed as early as about 120 msec in the P1 component of the ERP, reflecting perceptual processing in extrastriate visual cortex. These knowledge-dependent modulations of early stages of visual word recognition suggest that information about word meanings may modulate the perception of arbitrarily related visual features surprisingly early.

Deciphering CAPTCHAs: What a Turing Test Reveals about Human Cognition

Turning Turing's logic on its head, we used widespread letter-based Turing Tests found on the internet (CAPTCHAs) to shed light on human cognition. We examined the basis of the human ability to solve CAPTCHAs, where machines fail. We asked whether this is due to our use of slow-acting inferential processes that would not be available to machines, or whether fast-acting automatic orthographic processing in humans has superior robustness to shape variations. A masked priming lexical decision experiment revealed efficient processing of CAPTCHA words in conditions that rule out the use of slow inferential processing. This shows that the human superiority in solving CAPTCHAs builds on a high degree of invariance to location and continuous transforms, which is achieved during the very early stages of visual word recognition in skilled readers.

Phonology by itself: Masked phonological priming effects with and without orthographic overlap

The activation of the phonological code plays a central role in visual word recognition. However, it is still unclear how this activation is integrated within this mainly bottom-up process. In the present masked priming study we combined Greek and Spanish, two languages with common phonemes and partially overlapping graphemes to investigate this issue. Greek-Spanish bilinguals performed lexical decisions on Greek and Spanish targets, briefly preceded by either phonologically related or orthographically and phonologically related prime words of the nontarget language. Results revealed significant bidirectional cross-script masked phonological priming effects which disappeared under the influence of nearly overlapping orthographic representations. This pattern of effects suggests that there is fast and automatic language nonselective activation of the phonological code during the initial stages of visual word recognition but that this is clearly dependent on the orthographic properties of the input stimulus. The implications of our findings are discussed within the framework of current models of monolingual and bilingual visual word recognition.

ERP evidence of hemispheric independence in visual word recognition

This study examined the capability of the left hemisphere (LH) and the right hemisphere (RH) to perform a visual recognition task independently as formulated by the Direct Access Model ( Fernandino, Iacoboni, & Zaidel, 2007). Healthy native Hebrew speakers were asked to categorize nouns and non-words (created from nouns by transposing two middle letters) into man-made and natural categories while their performance and ERPs were recorded. The stimuli were presented parafoveally to the right and left visual fields. As predicted by the Direct Access Model, ERP data showed that both the left hemisphere and right hemisphere were able to differentiate between words and non-words as early as 170 ms post-stimulus; these results were significant only for the contralaterally presented stimuli. The N1 component, which is considered to reflect orthographic processing, was larger in both hemispheres in response to the contralateral than the ipsilateral presented stimuli. This finding provides evidence for the RH capability to access higher level lexical information at the early stages of visual word recognition, thus lending weight to arguments for the relatively independent nature of this process.