The Impact of Reader Skill on Phonological processing in visual Word Recognition

2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara J. Unsworth ◽  
Penny M. Pexman
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Phonological Activation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Do So

There has been much debate about the role of phonology in reading. This debate has been fuelled, in part, by mixed findings for phonological effects in lexical decision tasks. In the present research we investigated the impact of reader skill on three phonological effects (homophone, homograph, and regularity effects) in a lexical decision task and in a phonological lexical decision task. In both tasks, the more skilled readers showed different patterns of phonological effects from those of the less skilled readers; in particular, less skilled readers showed regularity effects in both tasks whereas more skilled readers did not. We concluded that more skilled readers activate phonology in these tasks but do so more efficiently, with less spurious phonological activation.

scholarly journals Phonologic Mediation is Fundamental to Reading: Evidence from Beginning Readers

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. T. Bosman ◽  
Annette de Groot
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Beginning Reading ◽  
Beginning Readers ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Semantic Categorization ◽  
Skilled Reading ◽  
Advanced Readers

Three tasks were employed to investigate the role of assembled phonology in beginning readers. In two proofreading tasks, children had more trouble finding pseudohomophone misspellings (stimuli with phonology identical to that of a word) than control misspellings (stimuli that do not share their phonology with a word). In a lexical-decision task, they had more trouble deciding that pseudohomophone misspellings were non-words than deciding that control misspellings were non-words. Finally, in a semantic-categorization task, children had more trouble rejecting pseudohomophone misspellings as a member of a designated category than rejecting control misspellings. Differences between more and less advanced readers occurred, but they need not be attributed to differential use of phonology in word recognition. Instead, they were explained in terms of a difference between reader groups in spelling-verification efficiency. The results of the present studies on beginning reading parallel studies on skilled reading by Van Orden et al. (1992). The main conclusion was that assembled phonology plays an important role in word recognition in beginning readers.

scholarly journals The Role of Phonology in Iconicity Effects: Evidence from Individual Differences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelsey Cnudde ◽  
David Sidhu ◽  
Penny M. Pexman
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Iconic Language

Growing evidence suggests that, along with arbitrariness, non-arbitrariness exists in language. An example of this is iconicity, in which a word’s form resembles its meaning. We investigated whether phonological processing plays a key role in the facilitated processing of iconic language (i.e., in some studies the meanings of iconic words are retrieved more quickly and more accurately). First, we reanalyzed the phonological lexical decision task (PLDT) data from Experiment 2 in Sidhu, Vigliocco, and Pexman (2020), and used accuracy on pseudohomophone trials to gauge extent of phonological processing. Participants with greater pseudohomophone accuracy were found to show larger iconic facilitation. We further tested this relationship with a new PLDT experiment, and collected imitativeness ratings for 522 words in order to manipulate the imitativeness of the iconic stimuli used. We found again that individual differences in phonological processing interacted with iconic facilitation. Further, these effects were found only for imitative iconic words (i.e., onomatopoeia and ideophones), suggesting that direct imitativeness is important to iconic facilitation. These findings suggest phonology plays a key role in iconic facilitation, and that the extent to which an individual engages in phonological processing may affect the strength of observed iconicity effects.

Phonological priming and the role of phonology in nonnative word recognition

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIRA GOR
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Phonological Priming ◽  
Lexical Competition ◽  
Minimal Pairs

Research on nonnative auditory word recognition makes use of a lexical decision task with phonological priming to explore the role of phonological form in nonnative lexical access. In a medium-lag lexical decision task with phonological priming, nonnative speakers treat minimal pairs of words differentiated by a difficult phonological contrast as a repetition of the same word. While native speakers show facilitation in medium-lag priming only for identical word pairs, nonnative speakers also show facilitation for minimal pairs. In short-lag phonological priming, when the prime and the target have phonologically overlapping onsets, nonnative speakers show facilitation, while native speakers show inhibition. This review discusses two possible reasons for facilitation in nonnative phonological priming: reduced sensitivity to nonnative phonological contrasts, and reduced lexical competition of nonnative words with underdifferentiated, or fuzzy phonolexical representations. Nonnative words may be processed sublexically, which leads to sublexical facilitation instead of the inhibition resulting from lexical competition.

The Interaction of Word Frequency and Stimulus Quality in the Lexical Decision Task: Now you See It, Now you Don't

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 757-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Wilding
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Stimulus Quality ◽  
Joint Effects ◽  
Two Factors

Two experiments are reported that examined the joint effects of word frequency and stimulus quality in the context of a lexical decision task. In the first experiment the interval between response to a stimulus and onset of the next stimulus was 0.8 sec, and the effect of the two factors was additive. In the second this interval was 3.3 sec, and the effect of reducing stimulus quality was greater for infrequent words than for frequent words. This is similar to the result of Norris (1984). The inability of current models of word recognition to explain this finding is discussed.

Vocabulary skill: single-case assessment of automaticity of word recognition in a timed lexical decision task

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Segalowitz ◽  
Vivien Watson ◽  
Sidney Segalowitz
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Single Case ◽  
English Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Vocabulary Assessment ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
Assessment Research

This study illustrates, in the context of vocabulary assessment research, a procedure for analysing a single subject's variability of response times (RTs) in a simple, timed lexical decision task. Following the interpretation developed in Segalowitz and Segalowitz (1993) for RT variability as reflection of the automatic/controlled nature of underlying processing mechanisms, it was possible to draw conclusions about the extent to which second language English word recognition in this subject was subserved by automatic as opposed to controlled processes. The study also examined the development of automaticity in word recognition skill for a small, selected vocabulary as a function of reading experience during a three-week testing period. The general implications of this methodology for assessing vocabulary skill in a single case are discussed.

scholarly journals The Omission of Accent Marks Does Not Hinder Word Recognition: Evidence From Spanish

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Marcet ◽  
María Fernández-López ◽  
Melanie Labusch ◽  
Manuel Perea
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Similar Response ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Semantic Categorization ◽  
Blocked Design

Recent research has found that the omission of accent marks in Spanish does not produce slower word identification times in go/no-go lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks [e.g., cárcel (prison) = carcel], thus suggesting that vowels like á and a are represented by the same orthographic units during word recognition and reading. However, there is a discrepant finding with the yes/no lexical decision task, where the words with the omitted accent mark produced longer response times than the words with the accent mark. In Experiment 1, we examined this discrepant finding by running a yes/no lexical decision experiment comparing the effects for words and non-words. Results showed slower response times for the words with omitted accent mark than for those with the accent mark present (e.g., cárcel < carcel). Critically, we found the opposite pattern for non-words: response times were longer for the non-words with accent marks (e.g., cárdil > cardil), thus suggesting a bias toward a “word” response for accented items in the yes/no lexical decision task. To test this interpretation, Experiment 2 used the same stimuli with a blocked design (i.e., accent mark present vs. omitted in all items) and a go/no-go lexical decision task (i.e., respond only to “words”). Results showed similar response times to words regardless of whether the accent mark was omitted (e.g., cárcel = carcel). This pattern strongly suggests that the longer response times to words with an omitted accent mark in yes/no lexical decision experiments are a task-dependent effect rather than a genuine reading cost.

On the limits of familiarity accounts in lexical decision: The case of repetition effects

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-383
Author(s):  
Manuel Perea ◽  
Ana Marcet ◽  
Marta Vergara-Martínez ◽  
Pablo Gomez
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Inhibitory Effect ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Episodic Retrieval ◽  
Repetition Effects ◽  
Repeated Item ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Initial Block ◽  
The Impact

Recent modelling accounts of the lexical decision task have suggested that the reading system performs evidence accumulation to carry out some functions. Evidence accumulation models have been very successful in accounting for effects in the lexical decision task, including the dissociation of repetition effects for words and nonwords (facilitative for words but inhibitory for nonwords). The familiarity of a repeated item triggers its recognition, which facilitates ‘word’ responses but hampers nonword rejection. However, reports of facilitative repetition effects for nonwords with several repetitions in short blocks challenge this hypothesis and favour models based on episodic retrieval. To shed light on the nature of the repetition effects for nonwords in lexical decision, we conducted four experiments to examine the impact of extra-lexical source of information—we induced the use of episodic retrieval traces via instructions and list composition. When the initial block was long, the repetition effect for nonwords was inhibitory, regardless of the instructions and list composition. However, the inhibitory effect was dramatically reduced when the initial block included two presentations of the stimuli and it was even facilitatory when the initial block was short. This composite pattern suggests that evidence accumulation models of lexical decision should take into account all sources of evidence—including episodic retrieval—during the process of lexical decision.

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