Electrifying the lexical decision

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Azevedo ◽  
Ruth Ann Atchley ◽  
Eva Kehayia

The current research utilizes lexical decision within an oddball ERP paradigm to study early lexical processing. Nineteen undergraduate students completed four blocks of the oddball lexical decision task (Nonword targets among Words, Word targets among Nonwords, Word targets among Pseudowords, and Pseudoword targets among Words). We observed a reliable P3 ERP component in conditions where the distinction between rare and frequent trials could be made solely based on lexical status (Words among Nonwords and Nonwords among Words). We saw a reliable P3 to rare words among frequent pseudowords, but no P3 was observed when participants were asked to detect pseudowords in the context of frequent word stimuli. We argue that this observed modulation of the P3 results is consistent with psycholinguistic literature that suggests that two criteria are available during lexical access when performing a lexicality judgement, a non-lexical criterion that relies on global activation at the word level and a lexical criterion that relies on activation of a lexical representation (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001; Grainger & Jacobs, 1996).

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
Kamil Długosz

Summary Research into cross-linguistic influence in L3 acquisition and processing has recently shown remarkable growth. However, still little is known about reverse interactions, i. e. the effects of L2 and L3 on L1. This study investigates visual cognate processing in Polish to determine whether lexical access in the dominant L1 is susceptible to the influence of the non-dominant L2 and L3. A group of 13 Polish learners of German and English participated in a lexical decision task in which both double and triple cognates were examined in comparison to control non-cognates and non-words. In line with the pattern found in most similar studies, the results reveal no cognate facilitation effect, thus indicating that L1 lexical access in multilinguals may also be selective with respect to L2 and L3. The theoretical consequences for L1 lexical processing in the multilingual mind are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-310
Author(s):  
Jeff Parker

Abstract The frequency and distribution of forms within a lexeme’s paradigm affect how quickly forms are accessed (e.g., Kostić, 1991; Milin, Filipović Đurđević, & Moscoso del Prado Martín, 2009; Moscoso del Prado Martı́n, Kostić, & Baayen, 2004). The distribution of forms across paradigms, in contrast, has received little experimental attention. Theoretical studies investigate the distribution of forms across paradigms because forms vary in how predictive they are of other (unknown) forms. Such investigations have uncovered typological tendencies (e.g., Ackerman & Malouf, 2013; Stump & Finkel, 2013) and contribute to explanations of language-specific phenomena (e.g., Sims, 2015; Parker & Sims, To appear). The intersection of these research approaches raises questions about how the distribution of forms within and across paradigms affects lexical access and representation. Based on forms of Russian nouns representing two morphosyntactic property sets and lexemes from three inflection classes, it is shown that speakers are sensitive to differences in form and morphosyntactic property set in a visual lexical decision task. In a priming task, nominative forms prime locative forms better than vice versa regardless of suffix, despite differences between the same forms in the lexical decision task. These results suggest that speakers make generalizations about forms across classes, including at the level of word forms and morphosyntactic property sets.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 185-190
Author(s):  
Filiz Mergen ◽  
Gulmira Kuruoglu

A great bulk of research in the psycholinguistic literature has been dedicated to hemispheric organization of words. An overwhelming evidence suggests that the left hemisphere is primarily responsible for lexical processing. However, non-words, which look similar to real words but lack meaningful associations, is underrepresented in the laterality literature. This study investigated the lateralization of Turkish non-words. Fifty-three Turkish monolinguals performed a lexical decision task in a visual hemifield paradigm. An analysis of their response times revealed left-hemispheric dominance for non-words, adding further support to the literature. The accuracy of their answers, however, were comparable regardless of the field of presentation. The results were discussed in light of the psycholinguistic word processing views.


2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 883-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
FABIENNE CHETAIL ◽  
STEPHANIE MATHEY

ABSTRACTThe aim of the study was to investigate the syllable activation hypothesis in French beginning readers. Second graders performed a lexical decision task in which bisyllabic words were presented in two colours that either matched the syllable boundaries or not. The data showed that the children were sensitive to syllable match and to syllable complexity. In addition, good readers were slowed down while poor readers were speeded up by syllable match. These findings suggest that syllables are functional units of lexical access in children and that syllable activation is influenced by reading level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-164
Author(s):  
Arne Lohmann ◽  
Benjamin V. Tucker

Abstract This article reports the results of an auditory lexical decision task, testing the processing of phonetic detail of English noun/verb conversion pairs. The article builds on recent findings showing that the frequent occurrence in certain prosodic environments may lead to the storage of prosody-induced phonetic detail as part of the lexical representation. To investigate this question with noun/verb conversion pairs, ambicategorical stimuli were used that exhibit systematic occurrence differences with regard to prosodic environment, as indicated by either a strong verb-bias, e.g., talk (N/V) or a strong noun-bias, e.g., voice (N/V). The auditory lexical decision task tests whether acoustic properties reflecting either the typical or the atypical prosodic environment impact the processing of recordings of the stimuli. In doing so assumptions about the storage of prosody-induced phonetic detail are tested that distinguish competing model architectures. The results are most straightforwardly accounted for within an abstractionist architecture, in which the acoustic signal is mapped onto a representation that is based on the canonical pronunciation of the word.


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
MADS POULSEN

ABSTRACTWord production difficulties are well documented in dyslexia, whereas the results are mixed for receptive phonological processing. This asymmetry raises the possibility that the core phonological deficit of dyslexia is restricted to output processing stages. The present study investigated whether a group of dyslexics had word level receptive difficulties using an auditory lexical decision task with long words and nonsense words. The dyslexics were slower and less accurate than chronological age controls in an auditory lexical decision task, with disproportionate low performance on nonsense words. The finding suggests that input processing difficulties are associated with the phonological deficit, but that these difficulties may be stronger above the level of phoneme perception.


1986 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wilding

An experiment is reported which showed that in a lexical decision task semantic priming by a related preceding word and repetition of target words produce additive effects on decision latency. Previous models of lexical access and modifications of them are discussed, and it is argued that some such models predict an interaction of priming and repetition, while others are insufficiently precise to make a prediction. It is suggested that the generality of effects across tasks requiring lexical access must be established and the components of complex effects must be separated before an adequate model can be devised to account for the data.


1980 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Kirsner ◽  
Heather L. Brown ◽  
S. Abrol ◽  
N. K. Chadha ◽  
N. K. Sharma

Forty-eight Hindi-English bilinguals completed two blocks of trials where each trial involved presentation of a letter string requiring a lexical decision. In the first block subjects were exposed to 22 words and 11 non-words in either English or Hindi. In the second block the original words were repeated in either the same language or in the alternative language. In this block the old (repeated) words were mixed with 22 new words, and 22 non-words. Twelve subjects were included in each of the four groups given by the factorial combination of blocks and languages. Reaction time in the lexical decision task was facilitated when words were repeated in the same language (109 and 125 ms in the English-English and Hindi-Hindi groups respectively), but little or no facilitation was observed in the inter-lingual conditions (-22 and 23 ms in the Hindi-English and English-Hindi conditions respectively). The results support the view that lexical representation in bilinguals is language-specific.


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