Is Masked Neighbor Priming Inhibitory?

Author(s):  
Wendy De Moor ◽  
Liesbeth Van der Herten ◽  
Tom Verguts

Abstract. To investigate neighbor effects in visual word recognition, the masked priming technique holds considerable advantages over unprimed methods, because a target word is used as its own control. However, inhibitory neighbor effects obtained with masked priming are still open for different interpretations, because the primes differ across conditions. Given this theoretical problem, it is useful to investigate neighbor priming effects using a prime as its own control. This option is available in the incremental priming technique ( Jacobs, Grainger, & Ferrand, 1995 ), in which a within-condition baseline is created by comparing the response times (RTs) to a target when it is primed at different prime durations. In this study, we examined masked neighbor priming using this technique. Both the traditional and the within-condition baseline indicated that masked neighbor word priming is inhibitory in nature. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of visual word recognition.

Author(s):  
Manuel Perea ◽  
Jon Andoni Duñabeitia ◽  
Manuel Carreiras

Transposing two internal letters of a word produces a perceptually similar item (e.g., CHOLOCATE being processed as CHOCOLATE). To determine the precise nature of the encoding of letter position within a word, we examined the effect of the number of intervening letters in transposed-letter effects with a masked priming procedure. In Experiment 1, letter transposition could involve adjacent letters (chocloate-CHOCOLATE) and nonadjacent letters with two intervening letters (choaolcte-CHOCOLATE). Results showed that the magnitude of the transposed-letter priming effect – relative to the appropriate control condition – was greater when the transposition involved adjacent letters than when it involved nonadjacent letters. In Experiment 2, we included a letter transposition condition using nonadjacent letters with one intervening letter (cholocate-CHOCOLATE). Results showed that the transposed-letter priming effect was of the same size for nonadjacent transpositions that involved one or two intervening letters. In addition, transposed-letter priming effects were smaller in the two nonadjacent conditions than in the adjacent condition. We examine the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 304
Author(s):  
Kelsey Cnudde ◽  
Sophia van Hees ◽  
Sage Brown ◽  
Gwen van der Wijk ◽  
Penny M. Pexman ◽  
...  

Visual word recognition is a relatively effortless process, but recent research suggests the system involved is malleable, with evidence of increases in behavioural efficiency after prolonged lexical decision task (LDT) performance. However, the extent of neural changes has yet to be characterized in this context. The neural changes that occur could be related to a shift from initially effortful performance that is supported by control-related processing, to efficient task performance that is supported by domain-specific processing. To investigate this, we replicated the British Lexicon Project, and had participants complete 16 h of LDT over several days. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) at three intervals to track neural change during LDT performance and assessed event-related potentials and brain signal complexity. We found that response times decreased during LDT performance, and there was evidence of neural change through N170, P200, N400, and late positive component (LPC) amplitudes across the EEG sessions, which suggested a shift from control-related to domain-specific processing. We also found widespread complexity decreases alongside localized increases, suggesting that processing became more efficient with specific increases in processing flexibility. Together, these findings suggest that neural processing becomes more efficient and optimized to support prolonged LDT performance.


2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 1983-1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian T. Gold ◽  
Kathleen Rastle

Considerable behavioral research has demonstrated that the visual word recognition system is sensitive to morphological structure. It has typically been assumed that analysis of morphologically complex words occurs only when the meaning of these words can be derived from the meanings of their constituents (e.g., hunter = hunt + er). However, results from recent behavioral research using the masked priming technique have demonstrated that morphological analysis can occur at an earlier orthographic level, in cases in which the meanings of complex words cannot be derived from their constituents (e.g., corner = corn + er). Here, we combine the logic of behavioral masked priming with the neurophysiological phenomenon of functional magnetic resonance imaging priming suppression to look for evidence of nonsemantic morphological priming at the neural level. Both behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging results indicated priming effects associated with the mere appearance of morphological structure (corner—CORN). In addition, these effects were distinguishable from lexical-semantic effects (bucket—PAIL) and orthographic effects (brothel—BROTH). Three left-lateralized occipito-temporal regions showed sensitivity to early morphological components of visual word recognition. Two of these regions also showed orthographic priming (∼BA 37, peak: −48 −60 −17; ∼BA 19, peak: −40 −77 −1), whereas one was sensitive only to morphological similarity between primes and targets (∼BA 19, peak: ∼37 ∼67 ∼7). These findings provide a neurobiological basis for a purely structural morphemic segmentation mechanism operating at early stages of visual word recognition.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Whiting ◽  
Yury Shtyrov ◽  
William Marslen-Wilson

Despite a century of research into visual word recognition, basic questions remain unresolved about the functional architecture of the process that maps visual inputs from orthographic analysis onto lexical form and meaning and about the units of analysis in terms of which these processes are conducted. Here we use magnetoencephalography, supported by a masked priming behavioral study, to address these questions using contrasting sets of simple (walk), complex (swimmer), and pseudo-complex (corner) forms. Early analyses of orthographic structure, detectable in bilateral posterior temporal regions within a 150–230 msec time frame, are shown to segment the visual input into linguistic substrings (words and morphemes) that trigger lexical access in left middle temporal locations from 300 msec. These are primarily feedforward processes and are not initially constrained by lexical-level variables. Lexical constraints become significant from 390 msec, in both simple and complex words, with increased processing of pseudowords and pseudo-complex forms. These results, consistent with morpho-orthographic models based on masked priming data, map out the real-time functional architecture of visual word recognition, establishing basic feedforward processing relationships between orthographic form, morphological structure, and lexical meaning.


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Fiorentino ◽  
Ella Fund-Reznicek

Recent masked priming studies suggest that complex words are rapidly segmented into potential morphological constituents during initial visual word recognition. Much of this evidence involves affixation or other formally regular operations, leaving open the question of whether these effects rely heavily on the identification of a closed-class affix or other formal regularity. In two masked priming experiments with English transparent and opaque bimorphemic compound primes consisting solely of open-class morphemes, we find significant constituent priming, but no significant priming for purely orthographic overlap. We conclude that masked morphological priming generalizes across word-formation types to include compounds with no affix or other regular form. These results provide new evidence for across-the-board morphological-level segmentation during visual word recognition and for morpheme-based compound processing.


Psihologija ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Havelka ◽  
Clive Frankish

Case mixing is a technique that is used to investigate the perceptual processes involved in visual word recognition. Two experiments examined the effect of case mixing on lexical decision latencies. The aim of these experiments was to establish whether different case mixing patterns would interact with the process of appropriate visual segmentation and phonological assembly in word reading. In the first experiment, case mixing had a greater effect on response times to words when it led to visual disruption of the multi-letter graphemes (MLGs) as well as the overall word shape (e.g. pLeAd), compared to when it disrupted overall word shape only (e.g. plEAd). A second experiment replicated this finding with words in which MLGs represent either the vowel (e.g. bOaST vs. bOAst) or the consonant sound (e.g. sNaCK vs. sNAcK). These results confirm that case mixing can have different effect depending on the type of orthographic unit that is broken up by the manipulation. They demonstrate that graphemes are units that play an important role in visual word recognition, and that manipulation of their presentation by case mixing will have a significant effect on response latencies to words in a lexical decision task. As such these findings need to be taken into account by the models of visual word recognition.


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