Interactions of stimulus quality and semantic context on N400 in visual word recognition

The joint effects of stimulus quality and semantic context in visual word recognition were examined with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. In one-character Chinese word recognition, we manipulated stimulus quality at two degradation levels (highly vs. slightly degraded) and semantic context at two priming levels (semantically related vs. unrelated). In a prime–target–probe trial flow, ERPs were recorded to the target character which was presented in either high or slight degradation and which was preceded by either a semantically related or unrelated prime character. The target character was then followed by a probe character which was either identical to or different from the target character. Subjects were instructed to make target–probe matching judgments. The ERP results demonstrated a degradation by priming interaction, with larger N400 semantic priming effects for slightly degraded targets. Moreover, the degradation effects were observed on the P200, N250, and N400. These findings provided evidence for the cascaded model of visual word recognition such that the visual processing cascaded into the semantic stage and thus interacted on the N400 amplitude. The results were compared to an earlier study with a null ERP degradation by priming interaction. The ramifications of these results for models of visual word recognition are discussed.

Where the Film Has the (Visual) Word?

To date, film magazines have primarily seen use as sources when researching individual periods of cinema history, rather than as objects of study themselves. Instead, the following paper brings the visuality, mediality and materiality of film periodicals to the fore. The question being addressed is the following: What kind of film knowledge and film understanding do illustrated film magazines negotiate in their presentation and selection—precisely in their (hitherto mainly disregarded) visuality, in their appearance, in their sensual material presence? The East German magazine Neue Filmwelt serves as an example for this approach. The essay proposes three ways of looking at the visual intermedial relation to film: How the magazine inscribes its words onto the picture; how it appropriates pictures, symbols, signets and typographies associated with cinema; and how it thereby outlines its very own position as a cultural and visual product in connection to film.

Faces and words are both associated and dissociated as evidenced by visual problems in dyslexia

Faces and words are traditionally assumed to be independently processed. Dyslexia is also traditionally thought to be a non-visual deficit. Counter to both ideas, face perception deficits in dyslexia have been reported. Others report no such deficits. We sought to resolve this discrepancy. 60 adults participated in the study (24 dyslexic, 36 typical readers). Feature-based processing and configural or global form processing of faces was measured with a face matching task. Opposite laterality effects in these tasks, dependent on left–right orientation of faces, supported that they tapped into separable visual mechanisms. Dyslexic readers tended to be poorer than typical readers at feature-based face matching while no differences were found for global form face matching. We conclude that word and face perception are associated when the latter requires the processing of visual features of a face, while processing the global form of faces apparently shares minimal—if any—resources with visual word processing. The current results indicate that visual word and face processing are both associated and dissociated—but this depends on what visual mechanisms are task-relevant. We suggest that reading deficits could stem from multiple factors, and that one such factor is a problem with feature-based processing of visual objects.

Letter chunk frequency does not explain morphological masked priming

Research on visual word identification has extensively investigated the role of morphemes, recurrent letter chunks that convey a fairly regular meaning (e.g., lead-er-ship). Masked priming studies highlighted morpheme identification in complex (e.g., sing-er) and pseudo-complex (corn-er) words, as well as in nonwords (e.g., basket-y). The present study investigated whether such sensitivity to morphemes could be rooted in the visual system sensitivity to statistics of letter (co)occurrence. To this aim, we assessed masked priming as induced by nonword primes obtained by combining a stem (e.g., bulb) with (i) naturally frequent, derivational suffixes (e.g., -ment), (ii) non-morphological, equally frequent word-endings (e.g., -idge), and (iii) non-morphological, infrequent word-endings (e.g., -kle). In two additional tasks, we collected interpretability and word-likeness measures for morphologically-structured nonwords, to assess whether priming is modulated by such factors. Results indicate that masked priming is not affected by either the frequency or the morphological status of word-endings, a pattern that was replicated in a second experiment including also lexical primes. Our findings are in line with models of early visual processing based on automatic stem/word extraction, and rule out letter chunk frequency as a main player in the early stages of visual word identification. Nonword interpretability and word-likeness do not affect this pattern.

Repetition Probability Effects for Words Depend on Language Knowledge

The magnitude of repetition suppression (RS), measured by fMRI, is modulated by the probability of repetitions (P(rep)) for various sensory stimulus categories. It has been suggested that for visually presented simple letters this P(rep) effect depends on the prior practices of the participants with the stimuli. Here we tested further if previous experiences affect the neural mechanisms of RS, leading to the modulatory effects of stimulus P(rep), for more complex lexical stimuli as well. We measured the BOLD signal in the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) of native Chinese and German participants and estimated the P(rep) effects for Chinese characters and German words. The results showed a significant P(rep) effect for stimuli of the mother tongue in both participant groups. Interestingly, Chinese participants, learning German as a second language, also showed a significant P(rep) modulation of RS for German words while the German participants who had no prior experiences with the Chinese characters showed no such effects. Our findings suggest that P(rep) effects on RS are manifest for visual word processing as well, but only for words of a language with which the participants have prior experiences. These results support further the idea that predictive processes, estimated by P(rep) modulations of RS, require prior experiences.