Visual Word Recognition Research Articles

Effects of age and familiarity on visual word recognition in Korean: Evidence from a web-based large scale lexical decision task

Effects of age and familiarity on visual word recognition in Korean: Evidence from a web-based large scale lexical decision task

Electrophysiological patterns of visual word recognition in deaf and hearing readers: an ERP mega-study

ABSTRACT Deaf and hearing readers have different access to spoken phonology which may affect the representation and recognition of written words. We used ERPs to investigate how a matched sample of deaf and hearing adults (total n = 90) responded to lexical characteristics of 480 English words in a go/no-go lexical decision task. Results from mixed effect regression models showed (a) visual complexity produced small effects in opposing directions for deaf and hearing readers, (b) similar frequency effects, but shifted earlier for deaf readers, (c) more pronounced effects of orthographic neighbourhood density for hearing readers, and (d) more pronounced effects of concreteness for deaf readers. We suggest hearing readers have visual word representations that are more integrated with phonological representations, leading to larger lexically-mediated effects of neighbourhood density. Conversely, deaf readers weight other sources of information more heavily, leading to larger semantically-mediated effects and altered responses to low-level visual variables.

Orthographic and semantic priming effects in neighbour cognates: Experiments and simulations

AbstractTo investigate how orthography and semantics interact during bilingual visual word recognition, Dutch–English bilinguals made lexical decisions in two masked priming experiments. Dutch primes and English targets were presented that were either neighbour cognates (boek – BOOK), noncognate translations (kooi – CAGE), orthographically related neighbours (neus – NEWS), or unrelated words (huid - COAT). Prime durations of 50 ms (Experiment 1) and 83 ms (Experiment 2) led to similar result patterns. Both experiments reported a large cognate facilitation effect, a smaller facilitatory noncognate translation effect, and the absence of inhibitory orthographic neighbour effects. These results indicate that cognate facilitation is in large part due to orthographic-semantic resonance. Priming results for each condition were simulated well (all r's >.50) by Multilink+, a recent computational model for word retrieval. Limitations to the role of lateral inhibition in bilingual word recognition are discussed.

Disambiguating Effects of Syllable Position and Neighborhood Size: Contributions of Hanja During Sino-Korean Processing.

A language's writing system offers a complex lens through which to explore its lexicon. Korean's bi-scriptal lexicon comprising its native script Hangul and Chinese Hanja, enables a unique window into what is and is not permissible in the language, as well as a chance to investigate how properties of the written form are reflected in the mental representation of the language. Through a novel priming paradigm, we investigated the effects of Hanja on visual word recognition in Hangul. In particular, we examined the effects of neighborhood size and syllable position of individual Sino-Korean morphemes. Although Hangul is the primary script, literate native Korean speakers are sensitive to the effects of Hanja; they are confronted with a lexicon written primarily in one (Hangul), but deeply influenced by another that is much less visible and commonly used (Hanja). We show that the contributions of Hanja are simply part and parcel of Sino-Korean lexical processing despite the asymmetry in use.

Visual word recognition among oldest old people: The effect of age and cognitive load.

During the fourth age, a marked physiological deterioration and critical points of dysfunction are observed, during which cognitive performance exhibits a marked decline in certain skills (fluid intelligence) but good performance of others (crystallized intelligence). Experimental evidence describes important constraints on word production during old age, accompanied by a relative stabilization of speech comprehension. However, cognitive changes associated with advanced aging could also affect comprehension, particularly word recognition. The present study examines how the visual recognition of words is affected during the fourth age when tasks involving different cognitive loads are applied. Through linear regression models, performance was compared between two third-age groups and a fourth-age group on reaction time (RT) and accuracy in naming, priming and lexical decision experiments. The fourth-age group showed a significant RT increase in all experiments. In contrast, accuracy was good when the task involved a low cognitive demand (Experiments 1 and 2); however, when a decisional cognitive factor was included (Experiment 3), the fourth-age group performed significantly worse than the younger third-age group. We argue that the behavior observed among fourth-age individuals is consistent with an unbalanced cognitive configuration, in which the fluid intelligence deficit significantly reduces the speed necessary to recognize words, independent of the cognitive load associated with the test. In contrast, the maintenance in crystallized intelligence improves the accuracy of the process, strengthening linguistic functionality in the advanced stages of old age.

Affective valence of words differentially affects visual and auditory word recognition.

Recognizing written or spoken words involves a sequence of processing stages, transforming sensory features into lexical-semantic representations. Whereas the later processing stages are common across modalities, the initial stages are modality-specific. In the visual modality, previous studies have shown that words with positive valence are recognized faster than neutral words. Here, we examined whether the effects of valence on word recognition are specific to the visual modality or are common across visual and auditory modalities. To address this question, we analyzed multiple large databases of visual and auditory lexical decision tasks, relating the valence of words to lexical decision times while controlling for a large number of variables, including arousal and frequency. We found that valence differentially influenced visual and auditory word recognition. Valence had an asymmetric effect on visual lexical decision times, primarily speeding up recognition of positive words. By contrast, valence had a symmetric effect on auditory lexical decision times, with both negative and positive words speeding up word recognition relative to neutral words. The modality-specificity of valence effects were consistent across databases and were observed when the same sets of words were compared across modalities. We interpret these findings as indicating that valence influences word recognition partly at the sensory-perceptual stage. We relate these effects to the effects of positive (reward) and negative (punishment) reinforcers on perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Detection of deviance in Japanese kanji compound words.

Reading fluency is based on the automatic visual recognition of words. As a manifestation of the automatic processing of words, an automatic deviance detection of visual word stimuli can be observed in the early stages of visual recognition. To clarify whether this phenomenon occurs with Japanese kanji compounds—since their lexicality is related to semantic association—we investigated the brain response by utilizing three types of deviants: differences in font type, lexically correct or incorrect Japanese kanji compound words and pseudo-kanji characters modified from correct and incorrect compounds. We employed magnetoencephalography (MEG) to evaluate the spatiotemporal profiles of the related brain regions. The study included 22 adult native Japanese speakers (16 females). The abovementioned three kinds of stimuli containing 20% deviants were presented during the MEG measurement. Activity in the occipital pole region of the brain was observed upon the detection of font-type deviance within 250 ms of stimulus onset. Although no significant activity upon detecting lexically correct/incorrect kanji compounds or pseudo-kanji character deviations was observed, the activity in the posterior transverse region of the collateral sulcus (pCoS)—which is a fusiform neighboring area—was larger when detecting lexically correct kanji compounds than when detecting pseudo-kanji characters. Taken together, these results support the notion that the automatic detection of deviance in kanji compounds may be limited to a low-level feature, such as the stimulus stroke thickness.

Familiarity with words modulates interhemispheric interactions in visual word recognition.

Bilateral redundancy gain (BRG) indicates superior performance in bilaterally presented word recognition in the left and right visual fields (RVFs) relative to word recognition given in either the left or the RVF. The BRG may be modulated by participants’ subjective familiarity with words as previous studies found smaller regional activations in the brain as they become proficient. It can be assumed that visual recognition of words with high subjective familiarity indicates skilled performance in visual recognition. Thus, this study examined the subjective familiarity effect of visual words on the BRG during lateralized lexical decision performances. It showed that the significant BRG of response times was only observed in the most familiar word condition (F4 level); on the other hand, accuracy results revealed the significant BRGs in all the subjective familiarity levels (F1, F2, F3, and F4 levels). These results suggest that the bilateral presentation of identical words with higher subjective familiarity facilitates the recognition led by cooperative interactions between cerebral hemispheres. Therefore, the subjective familiarity with visual words modulates the efficiency of hemispheric interactions in visual word recognition.

The neighbourhood frequency effect in naming is influenced by substituted-letter confusability and lexical skills

ABSTRACT The objective is to investigate lexical competition processes in visual word recognition with the naming task, according to the individual lexical skills of young adults. To do so, we examined the extent to which the orthographic neighbourhood frequency effect was influenced by the confusability of the substituted letter distinguishing the stimulus word from its higher-frequency orthographic neighbour. Individual lexical skills of 93 students were assessed by spelling, reading and vocabulary tests for the French language. GLMM analyses showed an inhibitory effect of orthographic neighbourhood frequency on naming times, as well as effects of reading and vocabulary skills on naming times and error rates. More interestingly, the inhibitory orthographic neighbourhood frequency effect on naming times was influenced by both the confusability of the substituted letter and the level of the individual’s reading and vocabulary skills. These results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of interactive activation and the lexical quality hypothesis.

Neural Correlates of Handwriting Effects in L2 Learners.

Learning to write involves integrating motor production and visual perception to develop orthographic representations. This study tries to test the effect of hand movement training as a pathway to neural correlates for L2 Chinese and L2 English readers. Twenty L2 Chinese and 20 L2 English (n = 20) adults participated in both behavioral and electroencephalogram (EEG) experiments. We designed six learning conditions: Hand Writing Chinese (HC), Viewing Chinese (VC), Drawing followed by Character Recognition in Chinese (DC), Hand Writing English (HE), Viewing English (VE), and Drawing followed by Word Recognition in English (DE). Behavioral and EEG results demonstrated that drawing facilitated visual word recognition in Chinese compared to viewing. The findings imply that hand movement could strengthen the neural processing and improve behavioral performance in Chinese character recognition for L2 Chinese learners and English word recognition for L2 Chinese learners. Furthermore, N170 amplitude at the drawing condition was positively correlated with N400 amplitudes. Thus, the early visual word recognition neural indicator (e.g., N170) was predictive of the late neural indicator of semantic processing (e.g., N400), suggesting that hand movement facilitates the neural correlates between early word recognition and later comprehension.

Effects of tDCS applied over the left IFG and pSTG language areas on verb recognition task performance.

Knowledge about the relevance of the left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG) and the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (lpSTG) in visual recognition of word categories is limited at present. tDCS is a non-invasive brain stimulation method that alters cortical activity and excitability, and thus might be a useful tool for delineating the specific impact of both areas on word recognition. The objective of this study was to explore whether the visual recognition process of verb categories is improved by a single tDCS session. lIFG and lpSTG areas were separately modulated by anodal tDCS to evaluate its effects on verbal recognition. Compared to sham stimulation, motor reaction times (RTs) were reduced after anodal tDCS over the lpSTG, and this effect was independent of the performing hand (right/left). These findings suggest that this region is involved in visual word recognition independently from the performing hand.

CCLOWW: A grade-level Chinese children's lexicon of written words.

In this article, we present the Chinese Children's Lexicon of Written Words (CCLOWW), the first grade-level database that provides frequency statistics of simplified Chinese characters and words for children. The database computes from a corpus of 34,671,424 character tokens and 22,427,010 word tokens (including single- and multicharacter words), extracted from 2131 books. It contains 6746 different character types and 153,079 different word types. CCLOWW provides several frequency indices of simplified Chinese for three grade levels (grade 2 and below, grades 3-4, grades 5-6) to profile children's experience with written Chinese in and outside of school. We describe in this article the distributions of frequency and contextual diversity of the characters and words, as well as word length and syntactic categories of the words in the corpus and the subcorpora. We also report results of correlation analyses with other written corpora and of several naming and lexicon decision experiments. The findings suggest that CCLOWW frequency measures correlate well with other corpora. Importantly, they could reliably predict children's and adults' naming and lexical decision performances. They could also explain variance in adults' visual word recognition, in addition to frequency measures computed in an adult corpus, indicating that early print exposure might influence readers' lexical processing later on beyond an age of acquisition effect. CCLOWW will help researchers in language processing and development as well as educators with selecting language materials appropriate for children's developmental stages. The database is freely available online at https://www.learn2read.cn/database/ .

A pupillometric study of developmental and individual differences in cognitive effort in visual word recognition

Throughout the history of modern psychology, the neural basis of cognitive performance, and particularly its efficiency, has been assumed to be an essential determinant of developmental and individual differences in a wide range of human behaviors. Here, we examine one aspect of cognitive efficiency—cognitive effort, using pupillometry to examine differences in word reading among adults (N = 34) and children (N = 34). The developmental analyses confirmed that children invested more effort in reading than adults, as indicated by larger and sustained pupillary responses. The within-age (individual difference) analyses comparing faster (N = 10) and slower (N = 10) performers revealed that in both age groups, the faster readers demonstrated accelerated pupillary responses compared to slower readers, although both groups invested a similar overall degree of cognitive effort. These findings have the potential to open up new avenues of research in the study of skill growth in word recognition and many other domains of skill learning.

Lexical competition influences correct and incorrect visual word recognition.

A growing body of research suggests that visual word recognition is error-prone, and that errors may contribute to inhibitory neighbour frequency effects in word identification and reading. The present study used the neighbourhood frequency effect to examine the relationship between lexical competition and error making during visual word recognition. A novel adaptation of the visual world paradigm (VWP) was used, in which participants selected a briefly presented printed target word from an array containing the target, its higher- or lower-frequency neighbour, an orthographic onset competitor, and an orthographically unrelated distractor word. Analyses of the visual inspection of the arrays suggested that lexical competition occurred when words were correctly identified, as competitors were preferentially viewed as a function of their orthographic similarity with the target, and higher-frequency neighbours were preferentially viewed over lower-frequency neighbours. Orthographic similarity and neighbour frequency also influenced error making. Targets were often mistaken for their neighbours, and these errors were more common for targets with higher-frequency neighbours. The time course of target and neighbour viewing for error trials also provided preliminary evidence for two kinds of errors: early-occurring, perceptual errors and later-occurring selection errors that resulted from unsuccessfully resolved lexical competition. Together, these findings suggest that neighbour frequency effects reflect the contribution of both general lexical competition and occasional errors.

Malay Lexicon Project 2: Morphology in Malay word recognition.

Morphological processing in visual word recognition has been extensively studied in a few languages, but other languages with interesting morphological systems have received little attention. Here, we examined Malay, an Austronesian language that is agglutinative. Agglutinative languages typically have a large number of morphemes per word. Our primary aim was to facilitate research on morphological processing in Malay by augmenting the Malay Lexicon Project (a database containing lexical information for almost 10,000 words) to include a breakdown of the words into morphemes as well as morphological properties for those morphemes. A secondary goal was to determine which morphological variables influence Malay word recognition. We collected lexical decision data for Malay words that had one prefix and one suffix, and first examined the predictive power of 15 morphological and four lexical variables on response times (RT). Of these variables, two lexical and three morphological variables emerged as strong predictors of RT. In GAMM models, we found a facilitatory effect of root family size, and inhibitory effects of prefix length and prefix percentage of more frequent words (PFMF) on RT. Next, we explored the interactions between overall word frequency and several of these predictors. Of particular interest, there was a significant word frequency by root family size interaction in which the effect of root family size is stronger for low-frequency words. We hope that this initial work on morphological processing in Malay inspires further research in this and other understudied languages, with the goal of developing a universal theory of morphological processing.

Role of Morphology in Visual Word Recognition: A Parafoveal Preview Study in Arabic Using Eye-Tracking

Words in Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are composed of two interwoven morphemes: roots and word patterns (verbal and nominal). Studies exploring the organizing principles of the mental lexicon in Hebrew reported robust priming effects by roots and verbal patterns, but not by nominal patterns. In Arabic, prior studies have produced some inconsistent results. Using the eye-tracking methodology, this study investigated whether the Arabic morphological classes (i.e., root, verbal pattern, nominal pattern) presented parafoveally would facilitate naming of foveally presented words among young native Arabic skilled readers. Results indicate that roots and both word patterns accelerated word naming latencies, suggesting that morphological knowledge contributed to word recognition processes in Arabic. The inclusion of the three morpheme classes into one study represents so far the most comprehensive study of morphological priming effects in Arabic.

Does Changing the Font Type Affect the Processing of Words Written in Cyrillic and Latin Alphabet?

To understand the reading process, it is necessary to explore the mechanisms of visual word recognition. The basic level of that recognition is the processing of letters, their size and visual identity. The specificity of the Serbian language is characterized by the parallel use of two alphabetic systems – Latin and Cyrillic, which contain a number of common, but also their own unique letters. Since some of the differences between the fonts are based on visual specific aditions at the end of letter's lines, there is also a significant contribution of fonts in letter recognition and reading. The main goal of this study is to examine the effect of font type on the processing of Latin and Cyrillic words. The aim was also to examine the effect of letter degradation on the word processing in these two alphabetic systems. The study included two experiments with Latin and Cyrillic words written in lowercase and uppercase. Participants were 221 students from the University of Banja Luka. Three factors were varied in both experiments: alphabet, “visual availability” (which refers to the visibility of words after degradation), and font type. Two analyses were performed ANOVA by subject (F1 analysis) and ANOVA by item (F2 analysis). Results show that there is a main effect of visual availability on processing speed of words. Visual degradation has slowed reaction time, but this effect is not the same in Latin and Cyrillic words. Significant interaction of font and alphabet is confirmed only in F2 analysis, so these results have limited validity. This study also revealed differences between lowercase and uppercase. Degradation of lowercase was more detrimental that degradation of uppercase. The obtained results indicate that word processing in two alphabetic systems can be partly explained by the visual characteristics and grapheme structure of their letters.

From decomposition to distributed theories of morphological processing in reading.

The morphological structure of complex words impacts how they are processed during visual word recognition. This impact varies over the course of reading acquisition and for different languages and writing systems. Many theories of morphological processing rely on a decomposition mechanism, in which words are decomposed into explicit representations of their constituent morphemes. In distributed accounts, in contrast, morphological sensitivity arises from the tuning of finer-grained representations to useful statistical regularities in the form-to-meaning mapping, without the need for explicit morpheme representations. In this theoretically guided review, we summarize research into the mechanisms of morphological processing, and discuss findings within the context of decomposition and distributed accounts. Although many findings fit within a decomposition model of morphological processing, we suggest that the full range of results is more naturally explained by a distributed approach, and discuss additional benefits of adopting this perspective.

Functional Gradient of the Fusiform Cortex for Chinese Character Recognition

Visual word recognition has been proposed to have a functional and spatial organization corresponding to hierarchical language-like word forms in the left fusiform gyrus (FG) during visual word recognition in alphabetic languages. However, it is still unclear whether the similar functional gradients of word-like representation exist during Chinese character recognition. In this study, we adopted univariate activation analysis and representational similarity analysis (RSA) methods to investigate the functional organization in the FG for Chinese character recognition using task fMRI data. Native Chinese readers were visually presented with four types of character-like stimuli (i.e., real characters, pseudo-characters, false characters, and stroke combinations). After analysis, we observed a posterior-to-anterior functional gradient in the left FG corresponding to the degree of likeness of stimuli to character. Additionally, distinct subregions of the left FG harbor different orthographic codes. The middle part of the left FG was involved in abstract orthographic processing, while the anterior part of the left FG was involved in lexical orthographic processing (i.e., mapping orthography onto phonology or semantics). Notably, for the right FG, we did not find similar coding pattern for selectivity to character likeness, indicating the asymmetry of the functional hierarchical organization in favor of the left hemisphere. In conclusion, our findings revealed that the left FG presents a posterior-to-anterior gradient functional processing for Chinese character recognition, which expands our understanding of the psychological, neural, and computational theories of word reading.

Does De-Iconization Affect Visual Recognition of Russian and English Iconic Words?

Iconic words constitute an integral part of the lexicon of a language, exhibiting form-meaning resemblance. Over the course of time, semantic and phonetic transformations “weaken” the degree of iconicity of a word. This iconicity loss is known as the process of de-iconization, which is divided into four stages, and, at each consecutive stage, the degree of a word’s iconicity is reduced. The current experimental study is the first to compare and contrast how English (N = 50) and Russian (N = 106) subjects recognize visually presented native iconic words (N = 32). Our aim is two-fold: first, to identify native speakers’ ability to perceive the fine-grained division of iconicity; and second, to control for the influence of participants’ native languages. This enables us to provide a more exhaustive analysis of the role of iconicity in word recognition and to combine empirical results with a theoretical perspective. The findings showed that the speakers of these languages are not equally sensitive to iconicity. As opposed to the English-speaking participants, who showed almost similar performance on each group of iconic words, the Russian participants tended to respond slower and less accurately to the words that were higher in iconicity. We discuss the major factors that may affect iconic word recognition in each language.