scholarly journals WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM MISTAKES: PROCESSING DIFFICULTIES WITH FREQUENTLY MISSPELLED WORDS

Author(s):  
D. A. Chernova ◽  
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S. V. Alexeeva ◽  
N. A. Slioussar ◽  
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...  

Even if we know how to spell, we often see words misspelled by other people — especially nowadays when we constantly read unedited texts on social media and in personal messages. In this paper, we present two experiments showing that the incidence of orthographic errors reduces the quality of lexical representations in the mental lexicon—even if one knows how to spell a word, repeated exposure to incorrect spellings blurs its orthographical representation and weakens the connection between form and meaning. As a result, it is more difficult to judge whether the word is spelled correctly, and — more surprisingly — it takes more time to read the word even when there are no errors. We show that when all other factors are balanced the effect of misspellings is more pronounced for the words with lower frequency. We compare our results with the only previous study addressing the problem of misspellings’ influence on the processing of correctly spelled words — it was conducted on the English data. It may be interesting to explore this issue in a cross-linguistic perspective. In this study, we turn to Russian, which differs from English by a more transparent orthography. Much larger corpora of unedited texts are available for English than for Russian, but, using a different way to estimate the incidence of misspellings, we obtained similar results and could also make some novel generalizations. In Experiment 1 we selected 44 words that are frequently misspelled and presented in two conditions (with or without spelling errors) and were distributed across two experimental lists. For every word, participants were asked to determine whether it is spelled correctly or not. The frequency of the word and the relative frequency of its misspelled occurrences significantly influenced the number of incorrect responses: not only it takes longer to read frequently misspelled words, it is also more difficult to decide whether they are spelled correctly. In Experiment 2 we selected 30 words from the materials of Experiment 1 and for every selected word, we found a pair that is matched for length and frequency, but is rarely misspelled due to its orthographic transparency. We used a lexical decision task, presenting these 60 words in the correct spelling, as well as 60 nonwords. We used LMMs for statistics. Firstly, the word type factor was significant: it takes more time to recognize a frequently misspelled word, which replicates the results obtained for English. Secondly, the interaction between the word type factor and the frequency factor was significant: the effect of misspellings was more pronounced for the words of lower frequency. We can conclude that high frequency words have more robust representations that resist blurring more efficiently than low frequency ones. Finally, we conducted a separate analysis showing that the number of incorrect responses in Experiment 1 correlates with RTs in Experiment 2. Thus, whether we consciously try to find an error or simply read words orthographic representations blurred due to exposure to frequent misspellings make the task more difficult.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xenia Schmalz ◽  
Eva Marinus ◽  
Anne Castles

Learning to read fluently involves moving from an effortful phonological decoding strategy to automatic recognition of familiar words. However, little is known about the timing of this transition, or the extent to which children continue to be influenced by phonological factors when recognizing words even as they progress in reading. We explored this question by examining regularity effects in a lexical decision task, as opposed to the more traditionally used reading-aloud task. Children in Grades 3 and 4 made go/no-go lexical decisions on high- and low-frequency regular and irregular words that had been matched for consistency. The children showed regularity effects in their accuracy for low-frequency words, indicating that they were using phonological decoding strategies to recognize unfamiliar words. The size of this effect was correlated with measures of reading ability. However, we found no regularity effects on accuracy for high-frequency words or on response times for either word type, suggesting that even 8-year-old children are already relying predominantly on a direct lexical strategy in their silent reading of familiar words.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos J. Álvarez ◽  
Janeth Hernández-Jaramillo ◽  
Juan A. Hernández-Cabrera

AbstractA number of studies have pointed out that stuttering-like disfluencies could be the result of failures in central and linguistic processing. The goal of the present paper is to analyze if stuttering implies deficits in the lexical and phonological processing in visual word recognition. This study compares the performance of 28 children with and without stuttering in a standard lexical decision task in a transparent orthography: Spanish. Word frequency and syllable frequency were manipulated in the experimental words. Stutterers were found to be considerably slower (in their correct responses) and produced more errors than the non- stutterers (χ(1) = 36.63, p < .001, η2 = .60). There was also a facilitation effect of syllable frequency, restricted to low frequency words and only in the stutterers group (t1(10) = 3.67, p < .005; t2(36) = 3.10, p < .001). These outcomes appear to suggest that the decoding process of stutterers exhibits a deficit in the interface between the phonological-syllabic level and the word level.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Palma ◽  
Marie-France Marin ◽  
k onishi ◽  
Debra Titone

Although several studies have focused on novel word learning and consolidation in native (presumably monolingual) speakers, less is know about how bilinguals add novel words to their mental lexicon. Here, we trained 33 English-French bilinguals on novel word-forms that were neighbors to “hermit” English words (i.e., words with no existing neighbors). Importantly, these English words varied in terms of orthographic overlap with their French translation equivalent (i.e., cognates vs. noncognates). We measured explicit recognition of the novel neighbors and the interaction between novel neighbors and English words through a lexical decision task, both before and after a sleep interval. In the lexical decision task, we found evidence of immediate facilitation for English words with novel neighbors, and evidence of competition after a sleep interval for cognate words only. These results suggest that higher quality of existing lexical representations predicts an earlier onset for novel word lexicalization.


2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
MINNA LEHTONEN ◽  
MATTI LAINE

The present study investigated processing of morphologically complex words in three different frequency ranges in monolingual Finnish speakers and Finnish-Swedish bilinguals. By employing a visual lexical decision task, we found a differential pattern of results in monolinguals vs. bilinguals. Monolingual Finns seemed to process low frequency and medium frequency inflected Finnish nouns mostly by morpheme-based recognition but high frequency inflected nouns through full-form representations. In contrast, bilinguals demonstrated a processing delay for all inflections throughout the whole frequency range, suggesting decomposition for all inflected targets. This may reflect different amounts of exposure to the word forms in the two groups. Inflected word forms that are encountered very frequently will acquire full-form representations, which saves processing time. However, with the lower rates of exposure, which characterize bilingual individuals, full-form representations do not start to develop.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miquel Llompart ◽  
Miquel Simonet

This study investigates the production and auditory lexical processing of words involved in a patterned phonological alternation in two dialects of Catalan spoken on the island of Majorca, Spain. One of these dialects, that of Palma, merges /ɔ/ and /o/ as [o] in unstressed position, and it maintains /u/ as an independent category, [u]. In the dialect of Sóller, a small village, speakers merge unstressed /ɔ/, /o/, and /u/ to [u]. First, a production study asks whether the discrete, rule-based descriptions of the vowel alternations provided in the dialectological literature are able to account adequately for these processes: are mergers complete? Results show that mergers are complete with regards to the main acoustic cue to these vowel contrasts, that is, F1. However, minor differences are maintained for F2 and vowel duration. Second, a lexical decision task using cross-modal priming investigates the strength with which words produced in the phonetic form of the neighboring (versus one’s own) dialect activate the listeners’ lexical representations during spoken word recognition: are words within and across dialects accessed efficiently? The study finds that listeners from one of these dialects, Sóller, process their own and the neighboring forms equally efficiently, while listeners from the other one, Palma, process their own forms more efficiently than those of the neighboring dialect. This study has implications for our understanding of the role of lifelong linguistic experience on speech performance.


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUDO VERHOEVEN ◽  
ROB SCHREUDER

ABSTRACTThis study examined to what extent advanced and beginning readers, including dyslexic readers of Dutch, make use of morphological access units in the reading of polymorphemic words. Therefore, experiments were carried out in which the role of singular root form frequency in reading plural word forms was investigated in a lexical decision task with both adults and children. Twenty-three adult readers, 37 8-year-old children from Grade 3, 43 11-year-old children from Grade 6, and 33 11-year-old dyslexic readers were presented with a lexical decision task in which we contrasted plural word forms with a high versus low frequency of the singular root form. For the adults, it was found that the accuracy and speed of lexical decision is determined by the surface frequency of the plural word form. The frequency of the constituent root form played a role as well, but in the low-frequency plural words only. Furthermore, a strong developmental effect regarding the accuracy and speed of reading plural word forms was found. An effect of plural word form frequency on word identification was evidenced in all groups. The singular root form frequency also had an impact of the reading of the plural word forms. In the normal reading and dyslexic children, plurals with a high-frequency singular root form were read more accurately and faster than plurals with a low singular root frequency. It can be concluded that constituent morphemes have an impact on the reading of polymorphemic words. The results can be explained in the light of a word experience model leaving room for morphological constituency to play a role in the lexical access of complex words as a function of reading skill and experience and word and morpheme frequency.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARJA PORTIN ◽  
MINNA LEHTONEN ◽  
MATTI LAINE

This study investigated the recognition of Swedish inflected nouns in two participant groups. Both groups were Finnish-speaking late learners of Swedish, but the groups differed in regard to their Swedish language proficiency. In a visual lexical decision task, inflected Swedish nouns from three frequency ranges were contrasted with corresponding monomorphemic nouns. The reaction times and error rates suggested morphological decomposition for low-frequency inflected words. Yet, both medium- and high-frequency inflected words appeared to possess full-form representations. Despite an overall advantage for the more proficient participants, this pattern was present in both groups. The results indicate that even late exposure to a language can yield such input representations for morphologically complex words that are typical of native speakers.


1971 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. O. Awojobi

The mixed boundary-value problems of the vibrations of rigid bodies on elastic media are generally considered in the low-frequency-factor range. It is first established that, quite apart from a consideration of resonance, the usual assumption that this range predominates in practice is erroneous. The present work, therefore, is concerned with vibrations at frequency factors which are much greater than unity. Five cases have been considered: torsional vibration of a rigid circular body on a semi-infinite elastic medium and on an infinitely wide elastic stratum on a rigid bed; vertical vibration of a rigid circular body and of an infinitely long rectangular body on a semi-infinite elastic medium; rocking of a long rectangular body on a semi-infinite elastic medium. An estimate of both the unknown dynamic stress distribution under the rigid bodies and their amplitude responses has been obtained by finding an approximate solution to the exact governing dual integral equations. It is shown that at high-frequency factors, stress distributions are approximately constant for vertical vibrations and vary linearly from the center for rotational vibrations as in a Winkler model of theoretical soil statics contrary to increasing stresses with infinite edge stresses for low-frequency and static stress distributions of rigid bodies on elastic half space. We also obtain the important conclusion for amplitude response that it is predominantly governed by the inertia of the bodies because the contribution due to the dispersion of waves in the elastic medium is generally of a lower order of frequency factor than the inertia term except for an incompressible medium which has been analyzed separately and found to be of the same order leading to expressions for equivalent inertia of the vibrating medium. The theoretical results are used to derive the “tails” of resonance curves for both half space and stratum cases where experimental results are available. The agreement is fair and improves with increasing frequency factor.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (11) ◽  
pp. 3366-3379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minna Lehtonen ◽  
Philip J. Monahan ◽  
David Poeppel

Are words stored as morphologically structured representations? If so, when during word recognition are morphological pieces accessed? Recent masked priming studies support models that assume early decomposition of (potentially) morphologically complex words. The electrophysiological evidence, however, is inconsistent. We combined masked morphological priming with magneto-encephalography (MEG), a technique particularly adept at indexing processes involved in lexical access. The latency of an MEG component peaking, on average, 220 msec post-onset of the target in left occipito-temporal brain regions was found to be sensitive to the morphological prime–target relationship under masked priming conditions in a visual lexical decision task. Shorter latencies for related than unrelated conditions were observed both for semantically transparent (cleaner–CLEAN) and opaque (corner–CORN) prime–target pairs, but not for prime–target pairs with only an orthographic relationship (brothel–BROTH). These effects are likely to reflect a prelexical level of processing where form-based representations of stems and affixes are represented and are in contrast to models positing no morphological structure in lexical representations. Moreover, we present data regarding the transitional probability from stem to affix in a post hoc comparison, which suggests that this factor may modulate early morphological decomposition, particularly for opaque words. The timing of a robust MEG component sensitive to the morphological relatedness of prime–target pairs can be used to further understand the neural substrates and the time course of lexical processing.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Witzel ◽  
Samantha Cornelius ◽  
Naoko Witzel ◽  
Kenneth I. Forster ◽  
Jonathan C. Forster

The DMDX software package (Forster & Forster, 2003) is a Windows-based application that displays stimuli and records responses. Recent developments in this program have made it possible to deploy DMDX experiments over the Internet. This study evaluates the viability of the web-deployable implementation of DMDX, or webDMDX, for masked priming experiments. A lexical decision task (LDT) with masked repetition priming on high- and low-frequency words and an e/a letter detection task were conducted with both lab-based DMDX (labDMDX; Experiment 1) and webDMDX. The webDMDX experiments were run on lab computers (Experiments 2) and on different (unknown) hardware (Experiment 3). The labDMDX and webDMDX experiments yielded comparable results on the LDT. In the e/a-detection task, the only important difference observed among the tests was between the lab-based experiment (Experiment 1) and the first webDMDX experiment (Experiment 2), at the 50 ms display duration. However, after a minor change in keyword coding (Experiment 2 follow-up) and an adjustment to the millisecond-to-retrace conversion process (Experiment 3), the detection rates at all display durations were similar in both labDMDX and webDMDX. Taken together, these results indicate the utility of webDMDX for masked priming experiments as well as for other time-sensitive methodologies.


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