Word Recognition Processes Research Articles

Reading Prosody: A Listening Guide for Teachers

AbstractProsody is an important indicator of reading development, but many teachers are unclear about how it can help students improve their reading fluency. Beyond demonstrating expressive or flowing reading, specific components of reading prosody can distinctly reveal how well word recognition and comprehension processes coalesce, providing teachers with useful information for their instruction. In this article, we review the research on reading prosody to clarify how differences in intonation, amplitude, and timing components distinguish struggling and strong readers. In addition, we discuss reading prosody considerations for classroom assessment and intervention by sharing insights drawn from educators trained to evaluate it systematically. We aim to clarify how teachers can use these reading prosody components to enhance classroom reading fluency practices.

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.

Regular exposure facilitates dual-mapping of Cantonese pronunciation variants

Abstract The multilingual landscape of Canada creates opportunities for many heterogeneous bilingual communities to experience systematic phonetic variation within and across languages and dialects, and exposes listeners to different pronunciation variants. This paper examines phonetic variation through the lens of an ongoing sound change in Cantonese involving word-initial [n] and [l] across two primed lexical decision tasks (Experiment 1: Immediate repetition priming task, Experiment 2: Long-distance repetition priming task). Our main question is: How are sound change pronunciation variants recognized and represented in a Cantonese-English bilingual lexicon? The results of both experiments suggest that [n]- and [l]-initial variants facilitate processing in both short and long-term spoken word recognition. Thus, regular exposure to Cantonese endows bilingual listeners with the perceptual flexibility to dually and gradiently map pronunciation variants to a single lexical representation.

문해력과 어휘 접속 효율 간의 관련성

Although the literacy has been recently emphasized in many areas, it is known rarely that the relationship between the literacy and the word recognition process. To find the relationship, the present study conducted an exploratory study to investigate whether a correlation between the literacy and the lexical access in a process of word recognition existed, and an experiment to specify the relation among two variables. This study found that a relevance between the literacy and lexical decision latencies and accuracy rates reflecting the effectiveness of lexical access through the exploratory study. The experimental study used the lexical decision task that ask participants to press “word” or “nonword” button when they showed strings on the monitor as correctly and rapidly as they can. Four hundred words were selected from Korean newspapers DB and dialog DB randomly and used stimuli in the lexical decision task. The current study used verified questionary for the literacy. The results show that upper score group in the literacy score elicit faster lexical decision latency and higher accuracy than lower score group. Based on the result, the present study explained which processes of the lexical access were more efficient in the upper group as compared to the lower group.

Linguistic and attentional factors – Not statistical regularities – Contribute to word-selective neural responses with FPVS-oddball paradigms

Studies using frequency-tagging in electroencephalography (EEG) have dramatically increased in the past 10 years, in a variety of domains and populations. Here we used Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) combined with an oddball design to explore visual word recognition. Given the paradigm's high sensitivity, it is crucial for future basic research and clinical application to prove its robustness across variations of designs, stimulus types and tasks. This paradigm uses periodicity of brain responses to measure discrimination between two experimentally defined categories of stimuli presented periodically. EEG was recorded in 22 adults who viewed words inserted every 5 stimuli (at 2 Hz) within base stimuli presented at 10 Hz. Using two discrimination levels (deviant words among nonwords or pseudowords), we assessed the impact of relative frequency of item repetition (set size or item repetition controlled for deviant versus base stimuli), and of the orthogonal task (focused or deployed spatial attention). Word-selective occipito-temporal responses were robust at the individual level (significant in 95% of participants), left-lateralized, larger for the prelexical (nonwords) than lexical (pseudowords) contrast, and stronger with a deployed spatial attention task as compared to the typically used focused task. Importantly, amplitudes were not affected by item repetition. These results help understanding the factors influencing word-selective EEG responses and support the validity of FPVS-EEG oddball paradigms, as they confirm that word-selective responses are linguistic. Second, they show its robustness against design-related factors that could induce statistical (ir)regularities in item rate. They also confirm its high individual sensitivity and demonstrate how it can be optimized, using a deployed rather than focused attention task, to measure implicit word recognition processes in typical and atypical populations.

Using Psychometric Network Analysis to Examine the Components of Spoken Word Recognition.

Using language requires access to domain-specific linguistic representations, but also draws on domain-general cognitive skills. A key issue in current psycholinguistics is to situate linguistic processing in the network of human cognitive abilities. Here, we focused on spoken word recognition and used an individual differences approach to examine the links of scores in word recognition tasks with scores on tasks capturing effects of linguistic experience, general processing speed, working memory, and non-verbal reasoning. 281 young native speakers of Dutch completed an extensive test battery assessing these cognitive skills. We used psychometric network analysis to map out the direct links between the scores, that is, the unique variance between pairs of scores, controlling for variance shared with the other scores. The analysis revealed direct links between word recognition skills and processing speed. We discuss the implications of these results and the potential of psychometric network analysis for studying language processing and its embedding in the broader cognitive system.

An eye movement study on the mechanisms of reading fluency development

Little is known about how word recognition processes, such as decoding, change when reading fluency improves during the school year. Such knowledge may have practical importance by determining which aspects of reading are most malleable at a certain age and reading level. The development of word-recognition subprocesses of third- and fourth-grade Finnish students (n = 81) with variable reading fluency was explored from longitudinal (6-month) text reading eye-tracking data. Generic development of the word recognition system was assessed from longitudinal changes in first fixation, average refixation durations and the number of first-pass fixations. The development of orthographic word representations and decoding was studied by examining the longitudinal changes in word frequency and word length effects, respectively. According to the results, the gain in reading fluency was mainly associated with decreases in first fixation and refixation durations. These decreases, in turn, inhibited the reduction in the number of fixations. However, students who could overcome this inhibitory effect, that is, by reading both with shorter fixation durations and with fewer fixations, developed most in reading fluency. The results seem to indicate that reading fluency development is driven by increased efficiency in representing letter strings in working memory. Over time, this development may lead to fewer fixations made into a word and, thus, more letters processed during each fixation.

Tracking the time-course of spoken word recognition of Cantonese Chinese in sentence context: Evidence from eye movements.

In this study, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the effects of sentence context and tonal information on spoken word recognition processes in Cantonese Chinese. We recruited 60 native Cantonese listeners to participate in the eye-tracking experiment. The target words (phonologically similar words) were manipulated to either (1) a congruent context or (2) an incongruent context in the experiment. The resulting eye-movement patterns in the incongruent context condition clearly revealed that (1) sentence context produced a garden-path effect in the initial stage of the spoken word recognition processes and then (2) the lexical tone of the word (bottom-up information) overrode the contextual effects to help listeners to discriminate between different similar-sounding words during lexical access. In conclusion, the patterns of eye-tracking data show the interactive processes between the lexical tone (an acoustic cue within a Cantonese word) and sentence context played in different phases to the spoken word recognition of Cantonese Chinese.

Advancements of phonetics in the 21st century: Theoretical and empirical issues of spoken word recognition in phonetic research

How do listeners understand what they are hearing? Humans hearing speech perform spoken word recognition, recognizing what words they are hearing in a speech stream in order to understand the meaning. Phonetics refers to the properties of the speech at a detailed level, particularly below the level of segmental phonemic distinctions. In order to recognize spoken words, listeners have to extract information from the detailed acoustic signal in some way, but theories differ about whether listeners extract phonemes, whole words, or other units, by what mechanism, and they differ on what kinds of information are stored in the lexicon. The process of spoken word recognition can be affected by any number of situations such as the speaker or listener being a non-native of the language or dialect, being a child, having a speech/hearing disability, hearing speech in noise, the speech itself containing variability, or many other situations. Any of these situations can shed light on theoretical questions by giving a fuller picture of how listeners recognize words. This chapter examines what we have learned in these first ∼21 years of the 21st century about how phonetics interacts with spoken word recognition.

When phonological neighbours cooperate during spoken sentence processing.

This study examined for the first time the impact of the presence of a phonological neighbour on word recognition when the target word and its neighbour co-occur in a spoken sentence. To do so, we developed a new task, the verb detection task, in which participants were instructed to respond as soon as they detected a verb in a sequence of words, thus allowing us to probe spoken word recognition processes in real time. We found that participants were faster at detecting a verb when it was phonologically related to the preceding noun than when it was phonologically unrelated. This effect was found with both correct sentences (Experiment 1) and with ungrammatical sequences of words (Experiment 2). The effect was also found in Experiment 3 where adjacent phonologically related words were included in the non-verb condition (i.e., word sequences not containing a verb), thus ruling out any strategic influences. These results suggest that activation persists across different words during spoken sentence processing such that processing of a word at position n + 1 benefits from the sublexical phonology activated during processing of the word at position n. We discuss how different models of spoken word recognition might be able (or not) to account for these findings.

Time course of Chinese compound word recognition as revealed by ERP data

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have yielded conflicting results regarding the onset of semantic processing in compound word recognition. This study examined the role of semantics in morphological processing using event-related potentials (ERP) recorded for Chinese compound targets primed by W+M+, W−M+, W−M− (W = whole-word semantics, M = morpheme meaning, + = congruent, and − = incongruent), semantically related and unrelated primes. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 of a masked priming lexical-decision task (SOA = 50 ms), EEG results demonstrated that the brain was sensitive to semantic information as early as between 100 and 250 ms. In Experiment 2 of an unmasked priming lexical-decision task (SOA = 200 ms), data confirmed early semantic access. The two EEG experiments also showed that the semantics of constituent morphemes may have little bearing on compound recognition. Overall, these results seem to converge with a form-and-meaning account of compound recognition.

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

Effects of spectral degradation on gated word recognition.

Although much is known about how normal-hearing listeners process spoken words under ideal listening conditions, little is known about how a degraded signal, such as speech transmitted via cochlear implants, affects the word recognition process. In this study, gated word recognition performance was measured with the goal of describing the time course of word identification by using a noise-band vocoder simulation. The results of this study demonstrate that spectral degradations can impact the temporal aspects of speech processing. These results also provide insights into the potential advantages of enhancing spectral resolution in the processing of spoken words.

Second language word processing in sentence contexts: pre-lexical prediction versus post-lexical integration

This study investigated the effects of sentence contexts on the second language (L2) word recognition process. It aims at finding whether second language (L2) learners of English perform similar to English native speakers in terms of using the sentence context to predict upcoming word in their L2. A group of L2 participants and a control group of native speakers (L1) participants performed a cross-modal priming task in which they were asked to make a lexical decision on a visually presented word while listening to a semantically related or non- related English sentence. The test was conducted to determine whether both groups of participants were able to predict an upcoming word based on the context of the preceding sentence that is auditorily presented. The study is conducted using PsychoPy software whereas the data was analyzed using linear-mixed effects modeling in RStudio software. The results showed that the L1 speakers were able to predict an upcoming word based on the context of the preceding sentence. That is, a significantly faster recognition of the related word was observed compared to the less related words. On other hand, the English second language participants were not as able to predict an upcoming word as quickly as the English native speaker participants were. However, the L2 participants showed post-access lexical processing or what is called an integrating process of the presented word to the previous sentence context. That is, an effect of the sentence context was observed with L2 participants, yet only after reading the presented word, they decide whether it is appropriate to the preceding sentence context or not. Acknowledgments The author is thankful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Najran University for funding this work under the National Research Priorities funding program.

Emotionality effects in Korean visual word recognition: Evidence from lab-based and web-based lexical decision tasks

Previous studies have shown that processes of word recognition are influenced by the emotional content of a word. This pattern is most readily explained by the motivated attention and affective states model (Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 1997), which states that emotional stimuli are motivationally significant and capture attention. Drawing on this theoretical account, the current study compared lexical decision response times to positive and negative emotion words versus neutral words across two experimental environments - a traditional lab-based environment and a web-based environment. In addition, the experiment was conducted using Korean words presented to native Korean speakers in order to test whether the emotionality effect emerges in a non-English language. The results revealed faster response times to emotion words versus neutral words across both experimental environments with no evidence of a difference between the two environments. These findings provide important evidence that emotion words successfully attract attention and facilitate word processing even in situations where participants might be more easily distracted than they would be in a traditional lab setting. This work also constitutes the first demonstration of an emotionality effect in Korean word recognition, thus providing further evidence that the emotionality effect may be a language-universal phenomenon.

The Teaching of Word Recognition to Pupils with Reading Difficulties in Class Two to Overcome Their Problems

The purpose of this study is to build the automatic process of word recognition for pupils who are less proficient at word recognition and reading. This study initially looked at the problems less proficient readers face and what research has revealed. It then explores what teachers can do in their practice, such as reading aloud, unlocking pronunciation models, using reading materials in reading programmes or letter-sound association, and mastering spelling, to name but a few, to facilitate the process of word recognition. Tasks are then introduced, such as extensive reading, read and look-up procedures, the matching of specific words with identical words, and predict and infer meaning tasks that pupils can work on to develop their word recognition skills. These include the use of phonics, fluency, vocabulary building, extensive reading, the look-and-say method, and syntactic word order clues. The final part of the paper explores autonomous learner methods (learner strategies) that can be employed by pupils to improve their word recognition skills.

Chinese Two-Character Word Orthographic Processing and Adjective-Noun Collocation Comprehension in Sentence Reading.

Reading can be regarded as a combination of lexical decoding and linguistic comprehension (Hoover and Gough in Read Writ Interdiscip J 2:127-160, 1990). In Chinese sentence reading, skilled readers' difficulties in phonological processing significantly enhance the 'wrap-up' effect (Li and Lin in J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ 25(4):505-516, 2020). To examine how orthographic processing in Chinese two-character word recognition might interact with adjective-noun collocation (ANC) comprehension before the wrap-up effect, two experiments were conducted in the same paradigm as used by Li and Lin (J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ 25(4):505-516, 2020). The sentences contained ANCs or semantically inappropriate combinations of adjectives and nouns (nANCs), the adjectives (Experiment 1) or the nouns (Experiment 2) of which were two-character words or corresponding transposed nonwords (T-nonwords). Similar results were obtained in both experiments: difficulties in T-nonword processing and in nANC comprehension collectively lengthened the reading times of the words immediately following. In conclusion, sentence reading likely contains interactions between orthographic processing and linguistic comprehension. As an indication of psycholinguistic significance, skilled readers have to use extra resources to suspend the cognitive vigilance that arises from unexpected demand in lexical decoding, in addition to their main focus of linguistic comprehension.

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.

Segmental contributions to word recognition in Arabic sentences

AbstractWe examined the contributions of segment type (consonants vs. vowels) and segment ratio to word recognition in Arabic sentences, a language that has a nonconcatenative morphological system in which consonants indicate semantic information, while vowels indicate structural information. In two experiments (with a balanced vowel-to-consonant ratio in Experiment 1 and an imbalanced ratio in Experiment 2), we presented participants with spoken sentences in Modern Standard Arabic, in which either consonants or vowels had been replaced by silence, and asked them to report what they could understand. The results indicate that consonants play a much greater role than vowels, both for balanced and also imbalanced sentences. The results also show greater word recognition for stimuli that contained a higher ratio of consonants to vowels. These results support and supplement previous findings on the role of consonantal roots in word recognition in Semitic languages, but clearly differ from those previously reported for non-Semitic languages which highlight the role of vowels in word recognition at the sentence level. We interpret this within the framework of root-and-pattern morphology, and further argue that segmental effects on word recognition and speech processing are crucially modulated by morphological structure.