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Biomedical subjects

J Segui

Publications and source records attributed to J Segui.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1990

Priming word recognition with orthographic neighbors: effects of relative prime-target frequency.

Four lexical decision experiments were performed with an orthographic priming paradigm in which test words were preceded by orthographically related or unrelated prime words. When prime words were presented for 350 ms without a mask, it was observed that primes that are lower frequency orthographic neighbors of the target interfered with target processing relative to an unrelated condition. When primes were higher frequency neighbors of the target, no interference or facilitation was observed. On the other hand, with briefly presented masked primes, interference was observed with higher frequency prime words. Finally, facilitatory effects in masked repetition priming were obtained with both high- and low-frequency prime-target pairs. The results are interpreted in terms of activation and selection processes operating in visual word recognition.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Limits on bilingualism.

Speech, in any language, is continuous; speakers provide few reliable cues to the boundaries of words, phrases, or ther meaningful units. To understand speech, listeners must divide the continuous speech stream into portions that correspond to such units. This segmentation process is so basic to human language comprehension that psycholinguists long assumed that all speakers would do it in the same way. In previous research, however, we reported that segmentation routines can be language-specific: speakers of English do not. French has relatively clear syllable boundaries and syllable-based timing patterns, whereas English has relatively unclear syllable boundaries and stress-based timing; thus syllabic segmentation would work more efficiently in the comprehension of French than in the comprehension of English. Our present study suggests that at this level of language processing, there are limits to bilingualism: a bilingual speaker has one and only one basic language.

England↗
PubMed1989

Phoneme monitoring and lexical processing: evidence for associative context effects.

In this paper, we propose a new version of the phoneme monitoring task that is well-suited for the study of lexical processing. The generalized phoneme monitoring (GPM) task, in which subjects detect target phonemes appearing anywhere in the test words, was shown to be sensitive to associative context effects. In Experiment 1, using the standard phoneme monitoring procedure in which subjects detect only word-initial targets, no effect of associative context was obtained. In contrast, clear context effects were observed in Experiment 2, which used the GPM task. Subjects responded faster to word-initial and word-medial targets when the target-bearing words were preceded by an associatively related word than when preceded by an unrelated one. The differential effect of context in the two versions of the phoneme monitoring task was interpreted with reference to task demands and their role in directing selective attention. Experiment 3 showed that the size of the context effect was unaffected by the proportion of related words in the experiment, suggesting that the observed effects were not due to subject strategies.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

On the role of competing word units in visual word recognition: the neighborhood frequency effect.

Current models of word recognition generally assume that word units orthographically similar to a stimulus word are involved in the visual recognition of this word. We refer to this set of orthographically similar words as an orthographic neighborhood. Two experiments are presented that investigate the ways in which the composition of this neighborhood can affect word recognition. The data indicate that the presence in the neighborhood of at least one unit of higher frequency than the stimulus word itself results in interference in stimulus word processing. Lexical decision latencies (Experiment 1) and gaze durations (Experiment 2) to words with one neighbor of higher frequency were significantly longer than to words without a more frequent neighbor. This neighborhood frequency effect is discussed in terms of the different types of candidate selection process postulated by contemporary models of visual word recognition.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Right hemisphere language processing: lateral difference with imageable and nonimageable ambiguous words.

Influence of imageability on hemispheric processing difference is studied in a lexical decision task with semantic priming. Homographs and ambiguous words were biased according to the prime toward their low or high imageable meanings and unilaterally presented in the visual field. A right visual field (RVF) superiority was observed; it was nonsignificant for the high imageable (HI) meaning but significant for the low imageable (LI) meaning of the ambiguous words. Thus the results seem to favor a bilateral hemispheric representation of HI words and a unilateral left representation of LI words. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed to the various models of ambiguous word access processing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

The word frequency effect and lexical access.

Some recent experiments suggest that only open class words show a frequency effect. Closed class items are accessed independently of their frequency. We carried out five experiments to test the validity of this hypothesis for the French language. All our results suggest that the frequency effect applies equally well to the open and closed class items.

France↗
PubMed1978

Strategies for sentence perception.

Three experiments are reported in which rapid sequential visual presentation of sentences--RSVP--was used to determine some perceptual processes in sentence perception. It was found that adjectives, when they are actually or potentially modifiers of a noun, are far less likely to be reported than any other part of the sentence. On the other hand, adjectives which are attribute adjectives are as likely to be reported as any other part of the sentence. Conclusions are drawn concerning sentence perception in general.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Morphological priming effect: the role of surface frequency.

Two cross-modal experiments were conducted to investigate the format of lexical representation of suffixed derived words and their stems. The results show that only low frequency suffixed words (as opposed to high frequency suffixed words) yield a full priming effect of their stems. By contrast, a stem (e.g., travail) does not fully prime words belonging to the same morphological family (e.g., travailleur), although it primes high frequency suffixed words more than it does low frequency words. To account for these findings we propose a model in which the stem and high frequency affixed words are represented both as full forms and as decomposed morphemes while low frequency affixed words are represented only in a decomposed form.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A language-specific comprehension strategy.

Infants acquire whatever language is spoken in the environment into which they are born. The mental capability of the newborn child is not biased in any way towards the acquisition of one human language rather than another. Because psychologists who attempt to model the process of language comprehension are interested in the structure of the human mind, rather than in the properties of individual languages, strategies which they incorporate in their models are presumed to be universal, not language-specific. In other words, strategies of comprehension are presumed to be characteristic of the human language processing system, rather than, say, the French, English, or Igbo language processing systems. We report here, however, on a comprehension strategy which appears to be used by native speakers of French but not by native speakers of English.

Hearing↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Organization of the mental lexicon in 12 schizophrenic subjects].

Using different tasks to test the organization of the mental lexicon in schizophrenics patients we tried to confirm the non organization of their mental lexicon as underlied by different authors and to show a wrong exploitation of their semantic competences. Our findings pointed out the difficulties of the evaluated lexical competences exploitation rather than the disturbances of these competences themselves.

Adult↗