Processing In Visual Word Recognition Research Articles

Neural mechanism underlying preview effects and masked priming effects in visual word processing.

Two classic experimental paradigms - masked repetition priming and the boundary paradigm - have played a pivotal role in understanding the process of visual word recognition. Traditionally, these paradigms have been employed by different communities of researchers, with their own long-standing research traditions. Nevertheless, a review of the literature suggests that the brain-electric correlates of word processing established with both paradigms may show interesting similarities, in particular with regard to the location, timing, and direction of N1 and N250 effects. However, as of yet, no direct comparison has been undertaken between the two paradigms. In the current study, we used combined eye-tracking/EEG to perform such a within-subject comparison using the same materials (single Chinese characters) as stimuli. To facilitate direct comparisons, we used a simplified version of the boundary paradigm - the single word boundary paradigm. Our results show the typical early repetition effects of N1 and N250 for both paradigms. However, repetition effects in N250 (i.e., a reduced negativity following identical-word primes/previews as compared to different-word primes/previews) were larger with the single word boundary paradigm than with masked priming. For N1 effects, repetition effects were similar across the two paradigms, showing a larger N1 after repetitions as compared to alternations. Therefore, the results indicate that at the neural level, a briefly presented and masked foveal prime produces qualitatively similar facilitatory effects on visual word recognition as a parafoveal preview before a single saccade, although such effects appear to be stronger in the latter case.

Investigating lexical categorization in reading based on joint diagnostic and training approaches for language learners

Efficient reading is essential for societal participation, so reading proficiency is a central educational goal. Here, we use an individualized diagnostics and training framework to investigate processes in visual word recognition and evaluate its usefulness for detecting training responders. We (i) motivated a training procedure based on the Lexical Categorization Model (LCM) to introduce the framework. The LCM describes pre-lexical orthographic processing implemented in the left-ventral occipital cortex and is vital to reading. German language learners trained their lexical categorization abilities while we monitored reading speed change. In three studies, most language learners increased their reading skills. Next, we (ii) estimated, for each word, the LCM-based features and assessed each reader’s lexical categorization capabilities. Finally, we (iii) explored machine learning procedures to find the optimal feature selection and regression model to predict the benefit of the lexical categorization training for each individual. The best-performing pipeline increased reading speed from 23% in the unselected group to 43% in the machine-selected group. This selection process strongly depended on parameters associated with the LCM. Thus, training in lexical categorization can increase reading skills, and accurate computational descriptions of brain functions that allow the motivation of a training procedure combined with machine learning can be powerful for individualized reading training procedures.

The spatiotemporal dynamics of letter processing in visual word recognition elucidated by random temporal sampling

The spatiotemporal dynamics of letter processing in visual word recognition elucidated by random temporal sampling

EXPRESS: The role of syllables and morphemes in silent reading: An eye-tracking study.

German skilled readers have been found to engage in morphological and syllable-based processing in visual word recognition. However, the relative reliance on syllables and morphemes in reading multi-syllabic complex words is still unresolved. The present study aimed to unveil which of these sub-lexical units are the preferred units of reading by employing eye-tracking technology. Participants silently read sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Words were visually marked by the use of color alternation (Experiment 1) or hyphenation (Experiment 2), either at syllable boundary (e.g., Kir-schen), at morpheme boundary (e.g., Kirsch-en) or within the units themselves (e.g., Ki-rschen). A control condition without disruptions was used as a baseline (e.g., Kirschen). The results of Experiment 1 showed that eye-movements were not modulated by color alternations. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that hyphens disrupting syllables had a larger inhibitory effect on reading times than hyphens disrupting morphemes, suggesting that eye-movements in German skilled readers are more influenced by syllablic than morphological structure.

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.

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.

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology.

Controversies have always existed in research related to reading abilities; on whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner based on orthographic information after which, other representations, such as phonology and semantics are activated, or whether these are fully interactive and high-level semantic information affects early processing. An interference paradigm was implemented in the presented protocol of phonological and semantic judgment tasks that utilized the same precede-target pairs to explore the relative order of phonological and semantic activation. The high- and low-frequency target words were preceded with three conditions: semantically related, phonological-related (homophones), or unrelated. The results showed that the induced P200 component of low-frequency word pairs was significantly greater than high-frequency words in both the semantic and phonological tasks. In addition, both the homophones in the semantic task and the semantically related pairs in the phonological task caused reduction in N400 when compared to the the control condition, word frequency-independently. It is worth noting that for the low-frequency pairs in the phonological judgment task, the P200 released by the semantically related word pairs was significantly larger than that in the control condition. Overall, semantic processing in phonological tasks and phonological processing in semantic tasks were found in both high- and low-frequency words, suggesting that the interaction between semantics and phonology may operate in a task-independent manner. However, the specific time this interaction occurred may have been affected by the task and frequency.

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Morpheme Position Coding in Reading Development as Explored With a Letter Search Task.

Suffixes have been shown to be recognized as units of processing in visual word recognition and their identification has been argued to be position-specific in skilled adult readers: in lexical decision tasks suffixes are automatically identified at word endings, but not at word beginnings. The present study set out to investigate whether position-specific coding can be detected with a letter search task and whether children already code suffixes as position-specific units. A preregistered experiment was conducted in Italian in which 3rd-graders, 5th-graders, and adults had to detect a target letter that was either contained in the suffix of a pseudoword (e.g., S in flagish) or in a non-suffix control (e.g., S in flagosh). To investigate sensitivity to position, letters also had to be detected in suffixes and non-suffixes placed in reversed position, that is in the beginning of pseudowords (e.g., S in ishflag vs. oshflag). Results suggested position-specific processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes that develop throughout reading development. However, some effects were weak and only partially compatible with the hypotheses. Therefore, a second experiment was conducted. The effects of position-specific suffix identification could not be replicated. A combined analysis additionally using a Bayesian approach indicated no processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes in our task. We discuss potential interpretations and the possibility of letter search being unsuited to investigate morpheme processing. We connect our example of failed self-replication to the current discussion about the replication crisis in psychology and the lesson psycholinguistics can learn.

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

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)

A Word on Words in Words: How Do Embedded Words Affect Reading?

A surprisingly small portion of reading research has been dedicated to investigating how the visual word recognition process is influenced by embedded words (e.g., ‘arm’ in ‘charm’), and no research has yet investigated embedded words in a natural reading setting. Covering this issue, the present work reports analyses of eye-tracking data from the GECO bilingual book reading corpus. Word viewing times were analyzed as a function of the number, frequency and proportional length of embedded words. We anticipated two scenarios: embedded words would either facilitate processing due to increased word-letter feedback, or inhibit processing due to increased lexical competition. A main facilitatory effect of embedded words on the recognition process was established, with an increasing number of embedded words resulting in shorter word viewing times and fewer fixations. This pattern was depicted by readers of Dutch as well as readers of English. Long, high-frequency embedded words formed an exception however, as these led to inhibition (Dutch participants) or a null-effect (English participants). The present results indicate that both scenarios outlined above are at play, but with a theoretical constraint on the role of word-to-word inhibitory connections. Specifically, such connections may predominantly exist among words of similar length. Hence, embedded words generally facilitate processing through word-letter feedback, but this facilitatory effect is countered by word-to-word inhibition if the embedded word’s length approximates that of its superset.

Are there similarities between emotional and familiarity-based processing in visual word recognition?

Abstract Previous ERP research revealed emotion effects on visual word processing in early time windows (P1) and during later evaluative processing (LPC). In both time windows interactions with word familiarity measures have been reported. Using an evaluative conditioning paradigm participants learned to associate meaningless pseudowords with neutral or negative valence. In addition, one set of pseudowords was learned three times as often as the others in order to manipulate familiarity. Behavioral results confirmed that evaluative conditioning was effective. Small effects of emotion on P1 and of overall conditioning on the LPC were visible, while familiarity only modulated later ERP amplitudes (>300ms). Exploratory analyses demonstrated a functional relationship between P1 and LPC emotion effects but not for familiarity. Post-hoc examinations illustrated that good learners showed effects of emotion and familiarity on LPC amplitudes which were not evident in participants performing below average. These results are discussed in light of questions regarding the representation and processing of valence and familiarity that are of interest for theoretical models of visual word recognition.

Evidence of Serial Processing in Visual Word Recognition

To test the limits of parallel processing in vision, we investigated whether people can recognize two words at once. Participants viewed brief, masked pairs of words and were instructed in advance to judge both of the words (dual-task condition) or just one of the words (single-task condition). For judgments of semantic category, the dual-task deficit was so large that it supported all-or-none serial processing: Participants could recognize only one word and had to guess about the other. Moreover, participants were more likely to be correct about one word if they were incorrect about the other, which also supports a serial-processing model. In contrast, judgments of text color with identical stimuli were consistent with unlimited-capacity parallel processing. Thus, under these conditions, serial processing is necessary to judge the meaning of words but not their physical features. Understanding the implications of this result for natural reading will require further investigation.

The impact of inverted text on visual word processing: An fMRI study

Visual word recognition has been studied for decades. One question that has received limited attention is how different text presentation orientations disrupt word recognition. By examining how word recognition processes may be disrupted by different text orientations it is hoped that new insights can be gained concerning the process. Here, we examined the impact of rotating and inverting text on the neural network responsible for visual word recognition focusing primarily on a region of the occipto-temporal cortex referred to as the visual word form area (VWFA). A lexical decision task was employed in which words and pseudowords were presented in one of three orientations (upright, rotated or inverted). The results demonstrate that inversion caused the greatest disruption of visual word recognition processes. Both rotated and inverted text elicited increased activation in spatial attention regions within the right parietal cortex. However, inverted text recruited phonological and articulatory processing regions within the left inferior frontal and left inferior parietal cortices. Finally, the VWFA was found to not behave similarly to the fusiform face area in that unusual text orientations resulted in increased activation and not decreased activation. It is hypothesized here that the VWFA activation is modulated by feedback from linguistic processes.

Phonological ambiguity modulates resolution of semantic ambiguity during reading: An fMRI study of Hebrew.

The current fMRI study examined the role of phonology in the extraction of meaning from print in each hemisphere by comparing homophonic and heterophonic homographs (ambiguous words in which both meanings have the same or different sounds respectively, e.g., bank or tear). The analysis distinguished between the first phase, in which participants read ambiguous words without context, and the second phase in which the context resolves the ambiguity. Native Hebrew readers were scanned during semantic relatedness judgments on pairs of words in which the first word was either a homophone or a heterophone and the second word was related to its dominant or subordinate meaning. In Phase 1 there was greater activation for heterophones in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), pars opercularis, and more activation for homophones in bilateral IFG pars orbitalis, suggesting that resolution of the conflict at the phonological level has abolished the semantic ambiguity for heterophones. Reduced activation for all ambiguous words in temporo-parietal regions suggests that although ambiguity enhances controlled lexical selection processes in frontal regions it reduces reliance on bottom-up mapping processes. After presentation of the context, a larger difference between the dominant and subordinate meaning was found for heterophones in all reading-related regions, suggesting a greater engagement for heterophones with the dominant meaning. Altogether these results are consistent with the prominent role of phonological processing in visual word recognition. Finally, despite differences in hemispheric asymmetry between homophones and heterophones, ambiguity resolution, even toward the subordinate meaning, is largely left lateralized. (PsycINFO Database Record

Evidence of serial processing in visual word recognition

To test the limits of parallel processing in vision, we investigated whether people can recognize two words at once. Participants viewed brief, masked pairs of words and were instructed in advance to judge both of the words (dual-task condition) or just one of the words (single-task condition). For judgments of semantic category, the dual-task deficit was so large that it supported all-or-none serial processing: Participants could recognize only one word and had to guess about the other. Moreover, participants were more likely to be correct about one word if they were incorrect about the other, which also supports a serial-processing model. In contrast, judgments of text color with identical stimuli were consistent with unlimited-capacity parallel processing. Thus, under these conditions, serial processing is necessary to judge the meaning of words but not their physical features. Understanding the implications of this result for natural reading will require further investigation.

Visual word recognition and vowelization in Arabic: new evidence from lexical decision task performances.

The effect of vowelization signs on the process of visual word recognition in Arabic was investigated among 41 native Arab skilled readers with age average of 30.66±9.09. The participants performed a lexical decision task using three types of words and pseudowords; full, partial and non-vowelized. The results showed that for both words and pseudowords, response times were shorter and accuracy levels were higher for the non-vowelized condition compared to the other conditions of vowelization. The results reinforce the argument that automatic lexical processes during word recognition in Arabic orthography might be disturbed by supplementary information such as vowelization.

The effect of semantic transparency on the processing of morphologically derived words: Evidence from decision latencies and event-related potentials.

Decomposition theories of morphological processing in visual word recognition posit an early morpho-orthographic parser that is blind to semantic information, whereas parallel distributed processing (PDP) theories assume that the transparency of orthographic-semantic relationships influences processing from the beginning. To test these alternatives, the performance of participants on transparent (foolish), quasi-transparent (bookish), opaque (vanish), and orthographic control words (bucket) was examined in a series of 5 experiments. In Experiments 1-3 variants of a masked priming lexical-decision task were used; Experiment 4 used a masked priming semantic decision task, and Experiment 5 used a single-word (nonpriming) semantic decision task with a color-boundary manipulation. In addition to the behavioral data, event-related potential (ERP) data were collected in Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5. Across all experiments, we observed a graded effect of semantic transparency in behavioral and ERP data, with the largest effect for semantically transparent words, the next largest for quasi-transparent words, and the smallest for opaque words. The results are discussed in terms of decomposition versus PDP approaches to morphological processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

Dissociation between magnocellular and parvocellular processing in visual word recognition

Dissociation between magnocellular and parvocellular processing in visual word recognition