scholarly journals Dual-stage and dual-deficit? Word recognition processes during text reading across the reading fluency continuum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarkko Hautala ◽  
Stefan Hawelka ◽  
Mikko Aro
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Reading Fluency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Fixation Duration ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Poor Reading ◽  
Dual Stage ◽  
Dual Route

AbstractCentral questions in the study of visual word recognition and developmental dyslexia are whether early lexical activation precedes and supports decoding (a dual-stage view) or not (dual-route view), and the locus of deficits in dysfluent reading. The dual-route view predicts early word frequency and length interaction, whereas the dual-stage view predicts word frequency effect to precede the interaction effect. These predictions were tested on eye movements data collected from (n = 152) children aged 9–10 among whom reading dysfluency was overrepresented. In line with the dual-stage view, the results revealed an early word frequency effect in first fixation duration followed by robust word length effect in refixation probability and an interaction of word frequency and word length in summed refixation duration. This progression was advanced in fluent reading to be observable already in first fixation duration. Poor reading fluency was mostly explained by inflated first fixation durations, and to stronger word frequency and length effects in summed refixation duration. This pattern of results suggests deficits in early letter encoding and slowness in serial grapheme-phoneme conversion. In contrast to the widely held belief, the holistic orthographic processing of words seemed to be intact.

Is the Word Frequency Effect on Recognition Threshold a Function of Transitional Probability?

1970 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Kinsbourne ◽  
Nicholas Evens
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Recognition Threshold ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Transitional Probability ◽  
Word Frequency Effect

Frequently used 5- and 6-letter words incorporate letter sequences of higher digram and trigram frequency than rare words. This could account for some or all of the frequency of usage effect on word recognition threshold.

A Neural Signature of Phonological Access: Distinguishing the Effects of Word Frequency from Familiarity and Length in Overt Picture Naming

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Graves ◽  
Thomas J. Grabowski ◽  
Sonya Mehta ◽  
Jean K. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Word Production ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Processing Cost ◽  
Left Posterior ◽  
Whole Word

Cognitive models of word production correlate the word frequency effect (i.e., the fact that words which appear with less frequency take longer to produce) with an increased processing cost to activate the whole-word (lexical) phonological representation. We performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects produced overt naming responses to photographs of animals and manipulable objects that had high name agreement but were of varying frequency, with the purpose of identifying neural structures participating specifically in activating whole-word phonological representations, as opposed to activating lexical semantic representations or articulatory-motor routines. Blood oxygen level-dependent responses were analyzed using a parametric approach based on the frequency with which each word produced appears in the language. Parallel analyses were performed for concept familiarity and word length, which provided indices of semantic and articulatory loads. These analyses permitted us to identify regions related to word frequency alone, and therefore, likely to be related specifically to activation of phonological word forms. We hypothesized that the increased processing cost of producing lower-frequency words would correlate with activation of the left posterior inferotemporal (IT) cortex, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Scan-time response latencies demonstrated the expected word frequency effect. Analysis of the fMRI data revealed that activity in the pSTG was modulated by frequency but not word length or concept familiarity. In contrast, parts of IT and IFG demonstrated conjoint frequency and familiarity effects, and parts of both primary motor regions demonstrated conjoint effects of frequency and word length. The results are consistent with a model of word production in which lexical-semantic and lexical-phonological information are accessed by overlapping neural systems within posterior and anterior language-related cortices, with pSTG specifically involved in accessing lexical phonology.

Demythologizing the word frequency effect

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. H. Baayen
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Predictors Of Response ◽  
Dual Route ◽  
Dual Route Model

This study starts from the hypothesis, first advanced by McDonald and Shillcock (2001), that the word frequency effect for a large part reflects local syntactic co-occurrence. It is shown that indeed the word frequency effect in the sense of pure repeated exposure accounts for only a small proportion of the variance in lexical decision, and that local syntactic and morphological co-occurrence probabilities are what makes word frequency a powerful predictor for lexical decision latencies. A comparison of two computational models, the cascaded dual route model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) and the Naive Discriminative Reader (Baayen, Milin, Filipovic Durdjevic, Hendrix, & Marelli, 2010), indicates that only the latter model properly captures the quantitative weight of the latent dimensions of lexical variation as predictors of response times. Computational models that account for frequency of occurrence by some mechanism equivalent to a counter in the head therefore run the risk of overestimating the role of frequency as repetition, of overestimating the importance of words’ form properties, and of underestimating the importance of contextual learning during past experience in proficient reading.

scholarly journals The word frequency effect during sentence reading: A linear or nonlinear effect of log frequency?

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J White ◽  
Denis Drieghe ◽  
Simon P Liversedge ◽  
Adrian Staub
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Fixation Duration ◽  
Bayes Factor ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Nonlinear Effects ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Linear Effect ◽  
Sentence Reading

The effect of word frequency on eye movement behaviour during reading has been reported in many experimental studies. However, the vast majority of these studies compared only two levels of word frequency (high and low). Here we assess whether the effect of log word frequency on eye movement measures is linear, in an experiment in which a critical target word in each sentence was at one of three approximately equally spaced log frequency levels. Separate analyses treated log frequency as a categorical or a continuous predictor. Both analyses showed only a linear effect of log frequency on the likelihood of skipping a word, and on first fixation duration. Ex-Gaussian analyses of first fixation duration showed similar effects on distributional parameters in comparing high- and medium-frequency words, and medium- and low-frequency words. Analyses of gaze duration and the probability of a refixation suggested a nonlinear pattern, with a larger effect at the lower end of the log frequency scale. However, the nonlinear effects were small, and Bayes Factor analyses favoured the simpler linear models for all measures. The possible roles of lexical and post-lexical factors in producing nonlinear effects of log word frequency during sentence reading are discussed.

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