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Temporal overlap in the linguistic processing of successive words in reading: reply to Pollatsek, Reichle, and Rayner (2006a).

A. Pollatsek, E. D. Reichle, and K. Rayner argue that the critical findings in A. W. Inhoff, B. M. Eiter, and R. Radach are in general agreement with core assumptions of sequential attention shift models if additional assumptions and facts are considered. The current authors critically discuss the hypothesized time line of processing and indicate that the success of Pollatsek et al.'s simulation is predicated on a gross underestimation of the pretarget word's viewing duration in Inhoff et al. and that the actual data are difficult to reconcile with the strictly serial attention shift assumption. The authors also discuss attention shifting and saccade programming assumptions in the E-Z Reader model and conclude that these are not in harmony with research in related domains of study.

Attention↗

New evidence for phonological processing during visual word recognition: the case of Arabic.

Lexical decision and naming were examined with words and pseudowords in literary Arabic and with transliterations of words in a Palestinian dialect that has no written form. Although the transliterations were visually unfamiliar, they were not easily rejected in lexical decision, and they were more slowly accepted in phonologically based lexical decision. Naming transliterations of spoken words was slower than naming of literary words and pseudowords. Apparently, phonological computation is mandatory for both lexical decision and naming. A large frequency effect in both lexical decision and naming suggests that addressed phonology is an option for familiar orthographic patterns. The frequency effect on processing transliterations indicated that lexical phonology is involved with prelexical phonological computation even if addressed phonology is not possible. These data support a combination between a cascade-type process, in which partial products of the grapheme-to-phoneme translation activate phonological units in the lexicon, and an interactive model, in which the activated lexical units feed back, shaping the prelexical phonological computation process.

Adolescent↗

Cortical localisation of the visual and auditory word form areas: a reconsideration of the evidence.

In this paper we examine the evidence for human brain areas dedicated to visual or auditory word form processing by comparing cortical activation for auditory word repetition, reading, picture naming, and environmental sound naming. Both reading and auditory word repetition activated left lateralised regions in the frontal operculum (Broca's area), posterior superior temporal gyrus (Wernicke's area), posterior inferior temporal cortex, and a region in the mid superior temporal sulcus relative to baseline conditions that controlled for sensory input and motor output processing. In addition, auditory word repetition increased activation in a lateral region of the left mid superior temporal gyrus but critically, this area is not specific to auditory word processing, it is also activated in response to environmental sounds. There were no reading specific activations, even in the areas previously claimed as visual word form areas: activations were either common to reading and auditory word repetition or common to reading and picture naming. We conclude that there is no current evidence for cortical sites dedicated to visual or auditory word form processing.

Adult↗

Orthographic processing in visual word identification.

A series of experiments is reported examining orthographic priming effects between briefly presented pairs of letter strings. The experiments investigate the effects of the number and position of letters shared by primes and targets, and the effects of prime-target length. Priming effects increase nonlinearly as a function of both the number and the position of shared letters, and they are dependent on the positions of letters relative to both the end positions in the string and to the identities of their nearest neighbours. There is little effect of absolute string length on priming. These priming effects can be distinguished from intrusion errors where letters from primes are reported in response to targets. An account of orthographic processing is outlined which attributes priming to cooperative interactions between coarse relative-position coded letter cluster representations activated by primes and targets. The implications of the findings for understanding other effects in word recognition and reading are discussed.

Adult↗

Hemisphere asymmetry and the processing of emotional words in anxiety.

High- and low-trait anxious subjects participated in a divided visual field emotional Stroop task. Subjects identified the colour of unilaterally presented threat-related, positive and neutral words. The high- and low-trait groups differed in terms of their accuracy scores but not in their reaction times. Analysis of the accuracy data revealed that the high-trait group exhibited right hemisphere interference for emotional relative to neutral trials whereas the low-trait showed right hemisphere interference for threat-related trials only. The idea that the right hemisphere is differentially specialised for the processing of emotional information was supported.

Adult↗

Implicit word activation during prerecognition processing: false recognition and remember/know judgments.

Recognition memory for spoken words is influenced by phonetic resemblance between test words and items presented during study. Presentation of derived nonwords (e.g., /d/ransparent or transparen/d/) on a study list produces a higher than normal false recognition rate to base words (e.g., transparent). Test words that share beginning phonemes with studied nonwords have more false recognitions than do those that share ending phonemes. The latter difference has been attributed to familiarity resulting from prerecognition processing of spoken stimuli. As a listener hears/traens/, "transparent" may be activated as a potential solution. In the present experiments, we minimized contributions of postrecognition processing to this phenomenon by presenting a semantically unrelated test word (transportation) that was also expected to be activated during prerecognition stages of processing. The results indicated that false recognition was increased for words presumed to be activated only during prerecognition processing. Remember (R) and know (K) judgments revealed that the majority of studied words were R, and the majority of false recognitions were K. The lowest proportion of R judgments occurred for test words that were not activated during postrecognition processing (e.g., transportation and control words).

Cognition↗

Processing of English words with fine acoustic contrasts and simple tones: a mismatch negativity study.

The purpose of this study was to compare the robustness of the event-related potential (ERP) response, called the mismatch negativity (MMN), when elicited by simple tone stimuli (differing in frequency, duration, or intensity) and speech stimuli (CV nonword contrast /de:/ vs. /ge:/ and CV word contrast /del/ vs. /gel/). The study was conducted using 30 young adult subjects (Groups A and B; n = 15 each). The speech stimuli were presented to Group A at a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 610 msec and to Group B at an SOA of 900 msec. The tone stimuli were presented to both groups at an SOA of 610 msec. MMN responses were elicited by the simple tone stimuli (66.7%-96.7% of subjects with MMN "present," or significantly different from zero, p < 0.05) but not the speech stimuli (10% subjects with MMN present for nonwords, 10% for words). The length of the SOA (610 msec or 900 msec) had no effect on the ability to obtain consistent MMN responses to the speech stimuli. The results indicated a lack of robust MMN elicited by speech stimuli with fine acoustic contrasts under carefully controlled methodological conditions. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to conflicting reports in the literature of speech-elicited MMNs, and the importance of appropriate methodological design in MMN studies investigating speech processing in normal and pathological populations.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Controlled and automatic processing during animal word list generation in schizophrenia.

Controlled and automatic aspects of semantic-associative functioning in schizophrenia were investigated by evaluating performance on animal word list generation (WLG). Responses from control (n = 47) and patient (n = 38) participants were subjected to multidimensional scaling (MDS), cluster analysis (CA), and indices on the basis of number of shared attributes (SA) between consecutive responses. Patient MDS results accounted for less variance and contained more error than control data. CA results yielded fewer and less clear animal-response subgroups among patients yet demonstrated intact associations among strongly related exemplars. The SA indices revealed better clustering and more effective switching among response clusters in controls than patients. Results suggest that animal WLG in schizophrenia is compromised both by aberrant automatic semantic-associative network activation and by controlled processes such as search, access, and selection. This pattern is consistent with prominent frontotemporal pathology evident in the disorder.

Adult↗

A letter-by-letter reader who could not read nonwords.

Letter-by-letter reading is a neuropsychological syndrome characterized by oral reading which seems to be mediated by explicit naming of constituent letters of the printed string. Thus reading time rises abnormally as a function of the length of the items to-be-read. This syndrome is generally interpreted as indicating a disconnection within the normal reading system prior to the activation of the visual and phonological lexical access routes. The patient retains a subsidiary strategy of spelling words by naming their constituent letters and uses this strategy for planning their pronunciation. If this interpretation is correct then reading aloud in letter-by-letter reading should not be affected by the features of the letter string which are stored lexically as the functional disconnection is postulated to occur prior to this stage. In this paper we report the case of a letter-by-letter reader who shows some signs which are puzzling in terms of current interpretations of the syndrome. They can be summarized as follows: (1) The patient reads words better than he reads nonwords; (2) Concrete words are processed more holistically while abstract words are processed more letter-by-letter; (3) Lexical decisions can be made far more rapidly than words can be read aloud. These three signs are very difficult to account for if reading is accomplished solely through a non-lexical reversed spelling strategy. Our experimental investigations of this patient are reported and alternative models assuming strategic control over the reading mechanism are discussed.

Adult↗

Effects of visual familiarity for words on interhemispheric cooperation for lexical processing.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of visual familiarity of words on interhemispheric lexical processing. Words and pseudowords were tachistoscopically presented in a left, a right, or bilateral visual fields. Two types of words, Katakana-familiar-type and Hiragana-familiar-type, were used as the word stimuli. The former refers to the words which are more frequently written with Katakana script, and the latter refers to the words which are written predominantly in Hiragana script. Two conditions for the words were set up in terms of visual familiarity for a word. In visually familiar condition, words were presented in familiar script form and in visually unfamiliar condition, words were presented in less familiar script form. The 32 right-handed Japanese students were asked to make a lexical decision. Results showed that a bilateral gain, which indicated that the performance in the bilateral visual fields was superior to that in the unilateral visual field, was obtained only in the visually familiar condition, not in the visually unfamiliar condition. These results suggested that the visual familiarity for a word had an influence on the interhemispheric lexical processing.

Adult↗

Processing units in word reading by disabled readers.

The article addresses the issue of whether disabled readers can be instructed to use within-word (multiletter) units. Several analogy methods were employed. In Experiments 1 and 2 short lists of words that differ in only one letter were repeatedly practiced. In Experiment 3 the subjects blended written and spoken words in which the place of segmentation was systematically manipulated. Subjects were tested in all experiments on the reading of practiced words, on nonpracticed words that orthographically as well as phonologically resemble the practiced words, and on nonpracticed nonsimilar words. The findings indicate that: (1) All types of practice were beneficial for the recognition of the practiced words. (2) Transfer to the reading of novel words appeared only when graphemic and orthographic aspects of words were strongly emphasized. (3) Transfer effects were based upon the improved handling of multiletter within-word units when word lists with auditory prompts were practiced, but on improved (single) letter-sound conversions when the analysis and synthesis of isolated words and word parts was trained. (4) At least in Dutch, segmentations according to the onset-rime principle were not more useful than segmenting written and spoken words at other boundaries.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Psychophysiological correlates of levels and stages of cognitive processing.

The psychophysiological manifestations of levels of cognitive processing were investigated. Words were processed at three cognitive levels (phonetic, low semantic, high semantic), and physiological recordings were made during cue, covert processing and verbalization stages. Differentiation of physiological reactivity across processing levels depending on stage of processing was found, with greater activation and incidental recall for the more complex semantic tasks. Heart rate and skin conductance showed greatest increases on trials that were later recalled. Results were interpreted as demonstrating a differentiation of the arousal of task expectancy from cognitive effort associated with processing level.

Adolescent↗

Tracking speech comprehension in space and time.

A fundamental challenge for the cognitive neuroscience of language is to capture the spatio-temporal patterns of brain activity that underlie critical functional components of the language comprehension process. We combine here psycholinguistic analysis, whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG), the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) paradigm, and state-of-the-art source localization techniques (Equivalent Current Dipole and L1 Minimum-Norm Current Estimates) to locate the process of spoken word recognition at a specific moment in space and time. The magnetic MMN to words presented as rare "deviant stimuli" in an oddball paradigm among repetitive "standard" speech stimuli, peaked 100-150 ms after the information in the acoustic input, was sufficient for word recognition. The latency with which words were recognized corresponded to that of an MMN source in the left superior temporal cortex. There was a significant correlation (r = 0.7) of latency measures of word recognition in individual study participants with the latency of the activity peak of the superior temporal source. These results demonstrate a correspondence between the behaviorally determined recognition point for spoken words and the cortical activation in left posterior superior temporal areas. Both the MMN calculated in the classic manner, obtained by subtracting standard from deviant stimulus response recorded in the same experiment, and the identity MMN (iMMN), defined as the difference between the neuromagnetic responses to the same stimulus presented as standard and deviant stimulus, showed the same significant correlation with word recognition processes.

Adult↗