scholarly journals Lexical access in Portuguese stress

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme D. Garcia ◽  
Natália Brambatti Guzzo

Categorical approaches to lexical stress typically assume that words have either regular or irregular stress, and imply that only the latter needs to be stored in the lexicon, while the former can be derived by rule. In this paper, we compare these two groups of words in a lexical decision task in Portuguese to examine whether the dichotomy in question affects lexical retrieval latencies in native speakers, which could indirectly reveal different processing patterns. Our results show no statistically credible effect of stress regularity on reaction times, even when lexical frequency, neighborhood density, and phonotactic probability are taken into consideration. The lack of an effect is consistent with a probabilistic approach to stress, not with a categorical (traditional) approach where syllables are either light or heavy and stress is either regular or irregular. We show that the posterior distribution of credible effect sizes of regularity is almost entirely (96.28%) within the region of practical equivalence, which provides strong evidence that no effect of regularity exists in the lexical decision data modelled. Frequency and phonotactic probability, in contrast, showed statistically credible effects given the experimental data modelled, which is consistent with the literature.

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Borkenau ◽  
Nadine Mauer

The trait–congruency hypothesis predicts that persons high in positive or negative trait affect more readily process pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, respectively. In two studies, participants were administered measures of personality and affect. Moreover, a yes/no lexical decision task with pleasant, unpleasant and neutral words was administered in Study 1, whereas a go/no‐go task was used in Study 2. Several methods to increase reliabilities of differences in reaction times are explored. Correlations of measures of personality and trait affect with decision times were mostly consistent with the trait–congruency hypothesis, particularly for decision times in the go/no‐go task that measured individual differences in valence‐specific decision times more reliably. The findings suggest that trait‐related concept accessibility is one source of trait congruity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari R. Baum

ABSTRACTTwo experiments were conducted to explore processing of relative clause structures by normal elderly adults. Four groups of subjects (aged 20–29 years, 60–69 years, 70–79 years, and 80–89 years) participated in a lexical decision task and a sentence repetition task. Results of the lexical decision task revealed longer reaction times and somewhat different patterns of performance for the older subjects as compared to the young subjects; on the repetition task, the oldest subjects performed more poorly overall. Findings are suggestive of a reduction in computational capacity in the elderly subjects, which may account for observed decrements in syntactic processing as compared to young adults.


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.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Wittenberg ◽  
Maria Mercedes Piñango

Henry gave Elsa a kiss give kiss give a kiss We test two approaches to light verb constructions: (1) joint predication in light verb constructions is stored as pre-specified, and their high frequency predicts less processing cost. (2) Joint predication in light verb constructions is built in real-time. The entailed extra-syntactic composition predicts greater cost. Results from a cross-modal lexical decision task show delayed, higher reaction times for light verb constructions, supporting (2), which is consistent with a linguistic architecture that has partly autonomous lexico-semantic storage and processing.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilo Strobach ◽  
Ute Schönpflug

The connectionist model is a prevailing model of the structure and functioning of the cognitive system of the processing of morphology. According to this model, the morphology of regularly and irregularly inflected words (e.g., verb participles and noun plurals) is processed in the same cognitive network. A validation of the connectionist model of the processing of morphology in German as L2 has yet to be achieved. To investigate L2-specific aspects, we compared a group of L1 speakers of German with speakers of German as L2. L2 and L1 speakers of German were assigned to their respective group by their reaction times in picture naming prior to the central task. The reaction times in the lexical decision task of verb participles and noun plurals were largely consistent with the assumption of the connectionist model. Interestingly, speakers of German as L2 showed a specific advantage for irregular compared with regular verb participles.


2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja A. Kotz

The current study set out to examine word recognition in early fluent Spanish–English bilinguals using a single word presentation lexical decision task (LDT). Reaction times (RTs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured while subjects (16 per language condition) made a lexical decision on words and pseudowords in either Spanish or English. Results show associative priming as measured by RTs, but both associative and categorical priming in the ERPs in both language conditions. The dissociation of RT and ERP effects suggests that the two measures might tap into different underlying processes during semantic priming or reflect different sensitivities towards semantic priming. Furthermore, both RT and ERP measures revealed symmetrical priming in L1 and L2. These data indicate that word recognition in early fluent bilinguals is equivalent for L1 and L2.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Rodríguez-González

Research into lexical processes shows that frequency and phonological similarity (neighborhood density) affect word processing and retrieval. Previous studies on inflectional morphology have examined the influence of frequency of occurrence in speech production on the inflectional verb paradigm in English. Limited work has been done to examine the influence of phonological similarity in languages with a more complex morphological system than English. The present study examined the influence of neighborhood density on the processing of Spanish Preterite regular and irregular verbs as produced by thirty native speakers of Spanish. The results of a naming task showed that regular verbs were processed faster and more accurately than irregular ones. Similar to what has been observed in English, a facilitative effect of neighborhood density for –ir verbs was observed in both regular and irregular verbs, such that –ir verbs with dense neighborhoods were produced faster and more accurately than –ir verbs with sparse neighborhoods. However, no neighborhood density effects were observed for –ar verbs (regular and irregular) in reaction times and accuracy rates. Thus, the activation of a specific –ir verb was facilitated by similar sounding verbs regardless of being regular and irregular. Implications for models of morphology language processing are discussed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (7) ◽  
pp. 1911-1918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nichol Castro ◽  
Kristin M. Pelczarski ◽  
Michael S. Vitevitch

Purpose Methods from network science have examined various aspects of language processing. Clinical populations may also benefit from these novel analyses. Phonological and lexical factors have been examined in adults who stutter (AWS) as potential contributing factors to stuttering, although differences reported are often subtle. We reexamined the performance of AWS and adults who do not stutter (AWNS) from a previously conducted lexical decision task in an attempt to determine if network science measures would provide additional insight into the phonological network of AWS beyond traditional psycholinguistic measures. Method Multiple regression was used to examine the influence of several traditional psycholinguistic measures as well as several new measures from network science on response times. Results AWS responded to low-frequency words more slowly than AWNS; responses for both groups were equivalent for high-frequency words. AWS responded to shorter words more slowly than AWNS, producing a reverse word-length effect. For the network measures, degree/neighborhood density and closeness centrality, but not whether a word was inside or outside the giant component, influenced response times similarly between groups. Conclusions Network analyses suggest that multiple levels of the phonological network might influence phonological processing, not just the micro-level traditionally considered by mainstream psycholinguistics.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Lockwood ◽  
Abigail Millings ◽  
Erica Hepper ◽  
Angela C. Rowe

Crying is a powerful solicitation of caregiving, yet little is known about the cognitive processes underpinning caring responses to crying others. This study examined (1) whether crying (compared to sad and happy) faces differentially elicited semantic activation of caregiving, and (2) whether individual differences in cognitive and emotional empathy moderated this activation. Ninety participants completed a lexical decision task in which caregiving, neutral, and nonwords were presented after subliminal exposure (24 ms) to crying, sad, and happy faces. Individuals low in cognitive empathy had slower reaction times to caregiving (vs. neutral) words after exposure to crying faces, but not after sad or happy faces. Results are discussed with respect to the role of empathy in response to crying others.


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