scholarly journals Word or Word-like? Dissociating Orthographic Typicality from Lexicality in the Left Occipito-temporal Cortex

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 992-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Woollams ◽  
Giorgia Silani ◽  
Kayoko Okada ◽  
Karalyn Patterson ◽  
Cathy J. Price

Prior lesion and functional imaging studies have highlighted the importance of the left ventral occipito-temporal (LvOT) cortex for visual word recognition. Within this area, there is a posterior–anterior hierarchy of subregions that are specialized for different stages of orthographic processing. The aim of the present fMRI study was to dissociate the effects of subword orthographic typicality (e.g., cider [high] vs. cynic [low]) from the effect of lexicality (e.g., pollen [word] vs. pillen [pseudoword]). We therefore orthogonally manipulated the orthographic typicality of written words and pseudowords (nonwords and pseudohomophones) in a visual lexical decision task. Consistent with previous studies, we identified greater activation for pseudowords than words (i.e., an effect of lexicality) in posterior LvOT cortex. In addition, we revealed higher activation for atypical than typical strings, irrespective of lexicality, in a left inferior occipital region that is posterior to LvOT cortex. When lexical decisions were made more difficult in the context of pseudohomophone foils, left anterior temporal activation also increased for atypical relative to typical strings. The latter finding agrees with the behavior of patients with progressive anterior temporal lobe degeneration, who have particular difficulty recognizing words with atypical orthography. The most novel outcome of this study is that, within a distributed network of regions supporting orthographic processing, we have identified a left inferior occipital region that is particularly sensitive to the typicality of subword orthographic patterns.

1993 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur H. Perlini ◽  
Audrey L. Lorimer ◽  
Kenneth B. Campbell ◽  
Nicholas P. Spanos

We examined the physiological and behavioral concomitants of high hypnotizable subjects reporting the capacity to hypnotically hallucinate. Subjects were required to perform a lexical decision task under baseline and four hypnotic hallucination conditions: obstructive, transparent, negative, and semantic. Analyses were conducted on various evoked potential components and psychophysical indices (RTs, sensitivity, response bias). Overall, hypnotic hallucinations did not alter VEPs over baseline; however, more liberal analyses indicated that the obstructive hallucination produced suppressions in the VEPs at P1 (left occipital), P2 (midline parietal) and P3 (midline parietal) compared to baseline. P1 latencies were also larger in the obstructive condition. Lexical decisions took longer in the hallucination conditions, and both sensitivity and response bias were reduced in these conditions. The relationship of these indices to attention are discussed.


Author(s):  
Emilia Kerr ◽  
Jonathan Mirault ◽  
Jonathan Grainger

AbstractInformal observation suggests that it is harder to notice the spelling mistake in “silencne” than “silencre.” This concurs with current evidence that non-adjacent letter repetition in correctly spelled words makes these words harder to recognize. One possible explanation is provided by open-bigram coding. Words containing repeated letters are harder to recognize because they are represented by fewer bigrams than words without repeated letters. Building on this particular explanation for letter-repetition effects in words, we predicted that nonwords in a lexical decision task should also be sensitive to letter repetitions. In particular, we examined two types of nonwords generated from the same baseword: (1) nonwords created by repeating one of the letters in the baseword (e.g., silence => silencne); and (2) nonwords created by inserting a letter that is not present in the baseword (e.g., silencre). According to open-bigram coding, nonwords created by repeating a letter are more similar to their baseword than nonwords created by inserting a letter, and this should make it harder to reject letter repetition nonwords than letter insertion nonwords. We put these predictions to test in one on-line pilot study (n=31), one laboratory experiment (n=36), and one follow-up on-line experiment (n=40) where we manipulated the distance between repetitions (one, two, three, or four letters). Participants found it harder to reject repetition nonwords than insertion nonwords, and this effect diminished with increasing distance.


1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 996-1003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Edwards ◽  
Margaret Lahey

This study examined the influence of nonlexical response factors on the speed of auditory lexical decisions in children and adults. Two groups of children (6- and 7-year-olds, 8- and 9-year-olds) and adults participated in three tasks: a real-word lexical decision task in which subjects were asked to say "yes" as quickly as possible to real words; a nonword lexical decision task in which subjects were asked to say "no" as quickly as possible to nonwords; and an auditory-vocal reaction time task in which subjects were asked to say "yes" or "no" to a tone. Response times on all tasks decreased with age. However, the age-related differences on the real-word lexical decision task disappeared when differences in auditory-vocal reaction times were taken into account. This result suggests that a large part of developmental differences in the speed of lexical processing may be due to nonlexical response factors.


2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
LIZ NATHAN ◽  
BILL WELLS

This study explores the hypothesis that children identified as having phonological processing problems may have particular difficulty in processing a different accent. Children with speech difficulties (n = 18) were compared with matched controls on four measures of auditory processing. First, an accent auditory lexical decision task was administered. In one condition, the children made lexical decisions about stimuli presented in their own accent (London). In the second condition, the stimuli were spoken in an unfamiliar accent (Glaswegian). The results showed that the children with speech difficulties had a specific deficit on the unfamiliar accent. Performance on the other auditory discrimination tasks revealed additional deficits at lower levels of input processing. The wider clinical implications of the findings are considered.


2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Carreiras ◽  
Andrea Mechelli ◽  
Adelina Estévez ◽  
Cathy J. Price

This functional magnetic resonance imaging study compared the neuronal implementation of word and pseudoword processing during two commonly used word recognition tasks: lexical decision and reading aloud. In the lexical decision task, participants made a finger-press response to indicate whether a visually presented letter string is a word or a pseudoword (e.g., “paple”). In the reading-aloud task, participants read aloud visually presented words and pseudowords. The same sets of words and pseudowords were used for both tasks. This enabled us to look for the effects of task (lexical decision vs. reading aloud), lexicality (words vs. nonwords), and the interaction of lexicality with task. We found very similar patterns of activation for lexical decision and reading aloud in areas associated with word recognition and lexical retrieval (e.g., left fusiform gyrus, posterior temporal cortex, pars opercularis, and bilateral insulae), but task differences were observed bilaterally in sensorimotor areas. Lexical decision increased activation in areas associated with decision making and finger tapping (bilateral postcentral gyri, supplementary motor area, and right cerebellum), whereas reading aloud increased activation in areas associated with articulation and hearing the sound of the spoken response (bilateral precentral gyri, superior temporal gyri, and posterior cerebellum). The effect of lexicality (pseudoword vs. words) was also remarkably consistent across tasks. Nevertheless, increased activation for pseudowords relative to words was greater in the left precentral cortex for reading than lexical decision, and greater in the right inferior frontal cortex for lexical decision than reading. We attribute these effects to differences in the demands on speech production and decision-making processes, respectively.


2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 1214-1228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madelon van den Boer ◽  
Peter F. de Jong ◽  
Marleen M. Haentjens-van Meeteren

Length effects in the lexical decision latencies of children might indicate that children rely on sublexical processing and essentially approach the task as a naming task. We examined this possibility by means of the effects of neighbourhood size and articulatory suppression on lexical decision performance. Sixty-six beginning and 62 advanced readers performed a lexical decision task in a standard, articulatory suppression, or tapping condition. We found length effects on words and nonwords in the children's lexical decisions. However, the effects of neighbourhood size were similar to those reported for adult lexical decisions, rather than the effects previously found in children's naming. In addition, no effect was found of articulatory suppression. Both findings suggest that, despite clear length effects, children do not adopt a naming task approach but, like adults, base lexical decisions mainly on a lexical search. These results pose a challenge for several computational models of reading.


2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 150-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Ortiz ◽  
Michael Reicherts ◽  
Alan J. Pegna ◽  
Encarni Garran ◽  
Michel Chofflon ◽  
...  

Patients suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) have frequently been found to suffer from damage to callosal fibers. Investigations have shown that this damage is associated with signs of hemisphere disconnections. The aim of our study was to provide evidence for the first signs of interhemispheric dysfunction in a mildly disabled MS population. Therefore, we explored whether the Interhemispheric Transfer (IT) deficit is multi-modal and sought to differentiate two MS evolution forms, on the basis of an interhemispheric disconnection index. Twenty-two patients with relapsing-remitting form of MS (RRMS) and 14 chronic-progressive (CPMS) were compared with matched controls on four tasks: a tachistoscopic verbal and non-verbal decision task, a dichotic listening test, cross tactile finger localization and motor tapping. No overall impairment was seen. The dichotic listening and lexical decision tasks were the most sensitive to MS. In addition, CPMS patients' IT was more impaired and was related to the severity of neurological impairment. The different sizes of the callosal fibers, which determine their vulnerability, may explain the heterogeneity of transfer through the Corpus Callosum. Therefore, evaluation of IT may be of value as an index of evolution in MS.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Maire ◽  
Renaud Brochard ◽  
Jean-Luc Kop ◽  
Vivien Dioux ◽  
Daniel Zagar

Abstract. This study measured the effect of emotional states on lexical decision task performance and investigated which underlying components (physiological, attentional orienting, executive, lexical, and/or strategic) are affected. We did this by assessing participants’ performance on a lexical decision task, which they completed before and after an emotional state induction task. The sequence effect, usually produced when participants repeat a task, was significantly smaller in participants who had received one of the three emotion inductions (happiness, sadness, embarrassment) than in control group participants (neutral induction). Using the diffusion model ( Ratcliff, 1978 ) to resolve the data into meaningful parameters that correspond to specific psychological components, we found that emotion induction only modulated the parameter reflecting the physiological and/or attentional orienting components, whereas the executive, lexical, and strategic components were not altered. These results suggest that emotional states have an impact on the low-level mechanisms underlying mental chronometric tasks.


Author(s):  
Xu Xu ◽  
Chunyan Kang ◽  
Kaia Sword ◽  
Taomei Guo

Abstract. The ability to identify and communicate emotions is essential to psychological well-being. Yet research focusing exclusively on emotion concepts has been limited. This study examined nouns that represent emotions (e.g., pleasure, guilt) in comparison to nouns that represent abstract (e.g., wisdom, failure) and concrete entities (e.g., flower, coffin). Twenty-five healthy participants completed a lexical decision task. Event-related potential (ERP) data showed that emotion nouns elicited less pronounced N400 than both abstract and concrete nouns. Further, N400 amplitude differences between emotion and concrete nouns were evident in both hemispheres, whereas the differences between emotion and abstract nouns had a left-lateralized distribution. These findings suggest representational distinctions, possibly in both verbal and imagery systems, between emotion concepts versus other concepts, implications of which for theories of affect representations and for research on affect disorders merit further investigation.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catharina Casper ◽  
Klaus Rothermund ◽  
Dirk Wentura

Processes involving an automatic activation of stereotypes in different contexts were investigated using a priming paradigm with the lexical decision task. The names of social categories were combined with background pictures of specific situations to yield a compound prime comprising category and context information. Significant category priming effects for stereotypic attributes (e.g., Bavarians – beer) emerged for fitting contexts (e.g., in combination with a picture of a marquee) but not for nonfitting contexts (e.g., in combination with a picture of a shop). Findings indicate that social stereotypes are organized as specific mental schemas that are triggered by a combination of category and context information.


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