On Coding the Position of Letters in Words

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Whitney ◽  
Daisy Bertrand ◽  
Jonathan Grainger
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Letter Position ◽  
Explicit Representation ◽  
Comparison Function ◽  
Spatial Coding ◽  
Coding Scheme ◽  
Coding Schemes ◽  
Scientific Inference ◽  
The Brain

Open-bigram and spatial-coding schemes provide different accounts of how letter position is encoded by the brain during visual word recognition. Open-bigram coding involves an explicit representation of order based on letter pairs, while spatial coding involves a comparison function operating over representations of individual letters. We identify a set of priming conditions (subset primes and reversed interior primes) for which the two types of coding schemes give opposing predictions, hence providing the opportunity for strong scientific inference. Experimental results are consistent with the open-bigram account, and inconsistent with the spatial-coding scheme.

Do Transposed-Letter Similarity Effects Occur at a Syllable Level?

2006 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 308-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Perea ◽  
Manuel Carreiras
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Letter Position ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Base Word ◽  
Coding Scheme ◽  
Coding Schemes ◽  
Single Presentation ◽  
Transposed Letters ◽  
Transposed Letter Effect

One key issue for any computational model of visual word recognition is the choice of an input coding scheme for assigning letter position. Recent research has shown that transposed-letter similarity effects occur even when the transposed letters are not adjacent (caniso- casino; Perea & Lupker, 2004 , JML). In the present study we conducted two single-presentation lexical decision experiments to examine whether transposed-letter effects occur at a syllable level. We tested two types of nonwords: (1) nonwords created by transposing two internal CV syllables (PRIVEMARA; the base word is primavera, the Spanish for spring) and (2) nonwords created by transposing two adjacent bigrams that do not form a syllable (PRIMERAVA). We also created the appropriate orthographic control conditions, in which the critical letters were replaced instead of being switched. Results showed that the transposition of two syllables or two adjacent bigrams produced a quite robust (and similar) transposed-letter effect. Thus, transposed-letter effects seem to occur at an early orthographic, graphemic level, rather than at a syllable level. We examine the implications of the observed results for the input coding schemes in visual word recognition.

scholarly journals The first letter position effect in visual word recognition: The role of spatial attention.

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 700-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Aschenbrenner ◽  
David A. Balota ◽  
Alexandra J. Weigand ◽  
Michele Scaltritti ◽  
Derek Besner
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Position Effect ◽  
Letter Position ◽  
Visual Word

scholarly journals Transposed-Letter Priming Effects for Close Versus Distant Transpositions

2008 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
pp. 384-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Perea ◽  
Jon Andoni Duñabeitia ◽  
Manuel Carreiras
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Letter Position ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
Similar Item

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.

scholarly journals Hemispheric Organization of Visual Word Recognition in Turkish Monolinguals

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-233
Author(s):  
Filiz Mergen ◽  
Gulmira Kuruoglu
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Brain Hemispheres ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Brain

Recently obtained data from interdisciplinary research has expanded our knowledge on the relationship between language and the brain considerably. Numerous aspects of language have been the subject of research. Visual word recognition is a temporal process which starts with recognizing the physical features of words and matching them with potential candidates in the mental lexicon. Word frequency plays a significant role in this process. Other factors are the similarities in spelling and pronunciation, and whether words have meanings or are simply letter strings. The emotional load of the words is another factor that deserves a closer inspection as an overwhelming amount of evidence supports the privileged status of emotions both in verbal and nonverbal tasks. It is well-established that lexical processing is handled by the involvement of the brain hemispheres to varying degrees, and that the left hemisphere has greater involvement in verbal tasks as compared to the right hemisphere. Also, the emotional load of the verbal stimuli affects the specialized roles of the brain hemispheres in lexical processing. Despite the abundance of research on processing of words that belong to languages from a variety of language families, the number of studies that investigated Turkish, a language of Uralic-Altaic origin, is scarce. This study aims to fill the gap in the literature by reporting evidence on how Turkish words with and without emotional load are processed and represented in the brain. We employed a visual hemifield paradigm and a lexical decision task. The participants were instructed to decide if the letter strings presented either from the right or the left of the computer screen were real words or non-words. Their response times and accuracy of their answers were recorded. We obtained shorter response times and higher accuracy rates for real words than non-words as reported in the majority of studies in the literature. We also found that the emotional load modulated the recognition of words, supporting the results in the literature. Finally, our results are in line with the view of left hemispheric superiority in lexical processing in monolingual speakers.

The processing of consonants and vowels during letter identity and letter position assignment in visual-word recognition: An ERP study

2011 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Vergara-Martínez ◽  
Manuel Perea ◽  
Alejandro Marín ◽  
Manuel Carreiras
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Letter Position ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Letter Identity

Does Kaniso Activate CASINO?

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 245-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joana Acha ◽  
Manuel Perea
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Letter Position ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Coding Schemes ◽  
Initial Syllable ◽  
Letter Position Coding ◽  
Position Coding ◽  
Transposed Letter Effect

Most recent input coding schemes in visual-word recognition assume that letter position coding is orthographic rather than phonological in nature (e.g., SOLAR, open-bigram, SERIOL, and overlap). This assumption has been drawn – in part – by the fact that the transposed-letter effect (e.g., caniso activates CASINO) seems to be (mostly) insensitive to phonological manipulations (e.g., Perea & Carreiras, 2006 , 2008 ; Perea & Pérez, 2009 ). However, one could argue that the lack of a phonological effect in prior research was due to the fact that the manipulation always occurred in internal letter positions – note that phonological effects tend to be stronger for the initial syllable ( Carreiras, Ferrand, Grainger, & Perea, 2005 ). To reexamine this issue, we conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment in which we compared the priming effect for transposed-letter pairs (e.g., caniso-CASINO vs. caviro-CASINO) and for pseudohomophone transposed-letter pairs (kaniso-CASINO vs. kaviro-CASINO). Results showed a transposed-letter priming effect for the correctly spelled pairs, but not for the pseudohomophone pairs. This is consistent with the view that letter position coding is (primarily) orthographic in nature.

Does Bold Emphasis Facilitate the Process of Visual-Word Recognition?

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Macaya ◽  
Manuel Perea
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Ideal Observer ◽  
Letter Recognition ◽  
Human Observer ◽  
Coding Schemes

AbstractThe study of the effects of typographical factors on lexical access has been rather neglected in the literature on visual-word recognition. Indeed, current computational models of visual-word recognition employ an unrefined letter feature level in their coding schemes. In a letter recognition experiment, Pelli, Burns, Farell, and Moore-Page (2006), letters in Bookman boldface produced more efficiency (i.e., a higher ratio of thresholds of an ideal observer versus a human observer) than the letters in Bookman regular under visual noise. Here we examined whether the effect of bold emphasis can be generalized to a common visual-word recognition task (lexical decision: “is the item a word?”) under standard viewing conditions. Each stimulus was presented either with or without bold emphasis (e.g., actor vs. actor). To help determine the locus of the effect of bold emphasis, word-frequency (low vs. high) was also manipulated. Results revealed that responses to words in boldface were faster than the responses to the words without emphasis –this advantage was restricted to low-frequency words. Thus, typographical features play a non-negligible role during visual-word recognition and, hence, the letter feature level of current models of visual-word recognition should be amended.

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