Dual-stage and dual-deficit? Word recognition processes during text reading across the reading fluency continuum

Central questions in the study of visual word recognition and developmental dyslexia are whether early lexical activation precedes and supports decoding (a dual-stage view) or not (dual-route view), and the locus of deficits in dysfluent reading. The dual-route view predicts early word frequency and length interaction, whereas the dual-stage view predicts word frequency effect to precede the interaction effect. These predictions were tested on eye movements data collected from (n = 152) children aged 9–10 among whom reading dysfluency was overrepresented. In line with the dual-stage view, the results revealed an early word frequency effect in first fixation duration followed by robust word length effect in refixation probability and an interaction of word frequency and word length in summed refixation duration. This progression was advanced in fluent reading to be observable already in first fixation duration. Poor reading fluency was mostly explained by inflated first fixation durations, and to stronger word frequency and length effects in summed refixation duration. This pattern of results suggests deficits in early letter encoding and slowness in serial grapheme-phoneme conversion. In contrast to the widely held belief, the holistic orthographic processing of words seemed to be intact.

Effects of Print Exposure on an Online Lexical Decision Task: A Direct Replication Using a Web-Based Experimental Procedure

Due to the global pandemic, behavioral sciences including psychology that have traditionally relied on face-to-face data collection methods are facing a crisis. Given these circumstances, the present study was designed as a web-based replication of the findings reported in Lee et al. (2019) on the relationship between print exposure measured by the Korean Author Recognition Test (KART) and online measures of word processing using the lexical decision task and offline measures of language ability. We used the PsychoPy3 and Pavlovia platform in which participants were presented with a series of tasks in an entirely web-based environment. We found that scores on the KART were correlated with scores on a measure of language skills as well as self-reported reading habits. In addition, KART scores modulated the word frequency effect in the lexical decision task such that participants with higher KART scores tended to have smaller frequency effects. These results were highly consistent with previous lab-based studies including Lee et al. indicating that web-based experimental procedures are a viable alternative to lab-based face-to-face experiments.

Can we use the internet to study speech production? Yes we can! Evidence contrasting online versus laboratory naming latencies and errors

The closure of cognitive psychology labs around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented in-person testing. This has caused a particular challenge for speech production researchers, as before the pandemic there were no studies demonstrating that reliable overt speech production data could be collected via the internet. Here, we present evidence that both accurate and reliable overt articulation data can be collected from internet-based speech production experiments. We tested 100 participants in a picture naming paradigm, where we manipulated the word and phonotactic frequency of the picture names. We compared our results to a lab-based study which used the same materials and design. We found a significant word frequency effect but no phonotactic frequency effect, fully replicating the lab-based results. Effect sizes were similar between experiments, but with significantly longer latencies in the internet-collected data. We found no evidence that internet upload or download speed affected either naming latencies or errors. In addition, we carried out a permutation-style analysis which recommends a minimum sample size of 40 participants for online production paradigms. In sum, our study demonstrates that internet-based testing of speech production is a feasible and promising endeavour, with less challenges than many researchers (anecdotally) assumed.

Word Frequency Effect in Lexical Decision Task: Evidence from Khalkha Mongolian

In experimental psycholinguistics, one clue into the architecture of lexical memory comes from the presence of robust frequency effects in lexical decision task (LDT), in which subjects judge whether a written stimulus is a real word or a nonword, and processing complexity is measured by reaction time (RT). For example, in LDT the visual word recognition process is facilitated (or inhibited) by word frequency as measured from the representative corpus. Our study verifies the word frequency effect in standard (“yes/no task”) LDT performed by Khalkha Mongolian subjects. The results showed strong weight of word frequency as RTs predictor (R2 = .631, F (1, 28) = 50.57, p < .000, β = .802, t = 7.111, p < .000). Our experimental results also correspond to experimental findings on word frequency effects for Japanese Katakana (syllabic) and Kanji (logographic) words in standard LDT. Such lexical decision “script moderation” could be the actual clue for further LDT experiments (e. g., relatively “deep” Mongolian script vs. “shallow” Cyrillic Mongolian)