Showing papers in "Language and Cognitive Processes in 2008"

Morphological decomposition based on the analysis of orthography

Abstract: Recent theories of morphological processing have been dominated by the notion that morphologically complex words are decomposed into their constituents on the basis of their semantic properties. In this article we argue that the weight of evidence now suggests that the recognition of morphologically complex words begins with a rapid morphemic segmentation based solely on the analysis of orthography. Following a review of this evidence, we discuss the characteristics of this form of decomposition, speculate on what its purpose might be, consider how it might be learned in the developing reader, and describe what is known of its neural bases. Our discussion ends by reflecting on how evidence for semantically based decomposition might be (re)interpreted in the context of the orthographically based form of decomposition that we have described.

Control mechanisms in bilingual language production: Neural evidence from language switching studies

Abstract: A key question in bilingual language production research is how bilingual individuals control the use of their two languages. The psycholinguistic literature concerning language control is unresolved. It is a matter of controversy whether (a) issues to do with control are central to understanding bilingual language processing; and (b) if they are, what is the site or sites of control; and (c) whether language control in bilinguals relies upon inhibitory mechanisms. One way to deepen our understanding of language control is to consider the implications from research on functional neuroimaging. In the present paper, we illustrate that neuroimaging research shows that bilinguals engage cognitive control networks for achieving tasks such as language switching. The neural evidence points to multiple neural regions of control that may rely upon an inhibitory mechanism. These 'brain data' may, in turn, stimulate the development of neurocognitive accounts of bilingual language processing.

Cracking the orthographic code: An introduction

Abstract: In this introduction to the special issue, I will first briefly summarise past research on orthographic processing, describing some of the central areas of empirical investigation and the major theories guiding that work. Next, I will describe the more recent lines of empirical and theoretical research that have emerged over the last decade or so, and that serve as the focus of the current special issue. I will attempt to summarise the key evidence that has emerged from this research, and examine how this evidence can guide model selection. Finally, I will discuss some possible avenues for future research on orthographic processing in the hope of finally ‘cracking the orthographic code’.

Reference production: Production-internal and addressee-oriented processes

Abstract: This paper reviews research on the production of referential expressions, examining the choice between explicit and attenuated lexical forms (e.g., pronouns vs. names), and between acoustically prominent and attenuated pronunciations. Both choices can be explained in terms of addressee-design, in that explicit expressions tend to be used in situations where the referent is relatively hard for the addressee to identify. At the same time, research on the mechanisms of reference production has identified some limits to the role of addressee design during reference production.

Interpreting pronouns and demonstratives in Finnish: Evidence for a form-specific approach to reference resolution

Abstract: Two Finnish language comprehension experiments are presented which suggest that the referential properties of pronouns and demonstratives cannot be reduced straightforwardly to the salience level of the antecedent. The findings, from a sentence completion study and visual world eye-tracking study, reveal an asymmetry in which features of the antecedent Finnish pronouns and demonstratives are most sensitive to, both in terms of their final interpretations and during real-time processing. In particular, the syntactic role and linear position of the antecedent, two factors which have been claimed to influence referent salience, have different effects on the interpretation of pronouns and demonstratives. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, pronouns and demonstratives cannot be mapped onto a unified salience hierarchy, because they exhibit different degrees of sensitivity to syntactic role and word order. We offer an alternative approach to anaphor resolution, the form-specific multiple-constraints approach.

Early decomposition in visual word recognition: Dissociating morphology, form, and meaning.

Abstract: The role of morphological, semantic, and form-based factors in the early stages of visual word recognition was investigated across different SOAs in a masked priming paradigm, focusing on English derivational morphology. In a first set of experiments, stimulus pairs co-varying in morphological decomposability and in semantic and orthographic relatedness were presented at three SOAs (36, 48, and 72 ms). No effects of orthographic relatedness were found at any SOA. Semantic relatedness did not interact with effects of morphological decomposability, which came through strongly at all SOAs, even for pseudo-suffixed pairs such as archer-arch. Derivational morphological effects in masked priming seem to be primarily driven by morphological decomposability at an early stage of visual word recognition, and are independent of semantic factors. A second experiment reversed the order of prime and target (stem-derived rather than derived-stem), and again found that morphological priming did not interact with semantic relatedness. This points to an early segmentation process that is driven by morphological decomposability and not by the structure or content of central lexical representations.

Morphological dynamics in compound processing

Abstract: This paper explores the time-course of morphological processing of trimorphemic Finnish compounds. We find evidence for the parallel access to full-forms and morphological constituents diagnosed by the early effects of compound frequency, as well as early effects of left constituent frequency and family size. We also observe an interaction between compound frequency and both the left and the right constituent family sizes. Furthermore, our data show that suffixes embedded in the derived left constituent of a compound are efficiently used for establishing the boundary between compounds’ constituents. The success of segmentation of a compound is demonstrably modulated by the affixal salience of the embedded suffixes. We discuss implications of these findings for current models of morphological processing and propose a new model that views morphemes, combinations of morphemes and morphological paradigms as probabilistic sources of information that are interactively used in recognition of complex words.

Alignment in Second Language Dialogue.

Abstract: This paper considers the nature of second language dialogues, involving at least one non-native (L2) speaker. We assume that dialogue is characterised by a process in which interlocutors develop similar mental states to each other (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). We first consider various means in which interlocutors align their mental states, and suggest why such alignment may be different in second language dialogues from dialogues involving native (L1) speakers. Specifically, we consider alignment in L2 speakers conversing with L1 speakers, L1 speakers conversing with L2 speakers, and L2 speakers conversing with each other, and sketch a range of experimental predictions.

Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When beauticians, musicians, and mechanics are all men

Abstract: The influence of stereotype and grammatical information (masculine intended as generic) on the representation of gender in language was investigated using a sentence evaluation paradigm. The first sentence introduced a role name (e.g., The spies came out ...) and the second sentence contained explicit information about the gender of one or more of the characters (e.g., ...one of the women ...). The experiment was conducted in French, German, and English. In contrast to English, stereotypicality of role names had no influence on readers' male biased representations in French and German, where interpretations were dominated by the masculinity of the masculine (allegedly) intended as generic.

An ERP study of the processing of subject and object relative clauses in Japanese

Abstract: Using reading times and event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we investigated the processing of Japanese subject and object relative clauses (SRs/ORs). Previous research on English relative clauses shows that ORs take longer to read (King & Just, 1991) and elicit anterior negativity between fillers and gaps (King & Kutas, 1995), which is attributed to increased working memory load due to longer filler-gap distance. In contrast to English, gaps in Japanese relative clauses are less clearly marked and precede their fillers, and the linear gap-filler distance is shorter in ORs than in SRs. Nevertheless, Japanese ORs take longer to read (Ishizuka, Nakatani, & Gibson, 2003; Miyamoto & Nakamura, 2003), perhaps because in both English and Japanese, gaps in ORs are more deeply embedded, with the result that there is longer structural distance between filler and gap in their syntactic representations (O'Grady, 1997). We investigated how gap-filler association in Japanese would compare to filler-gap association in...

Transposed-letter effects: Consonants, vowels and letter frequency

Abstract: There is now considerable evidence (e.g., Perea & Lupker, 2003a, 2003b) that transposed-letter nonword primes (e.g., jugde for JUDGE) are more effective primes than replacement-letter nonword primes (e.g., jupte for JUDGE). Recently, Perea and Lupker (2004) demonstrated that, in Spanish, this transposed-letter prime advantage exists only when the transposed letters are consonants (C-C transpositions) and not when they are vowels (V-V transpositions). This vowel-consonant difference causes problems even for models that can successfully explain transposed-letter effects (e.g., SOLAR, Davis, 1999). In Experiment 1 in the present paper, we demonstrated a parallel result in a language with a different syllabic structure (English) in both a masked priming experiment and an unprimed lexical decision task in which the transposed letter strings (e.g., ADACEMY, ACEDAMY) were used as the nonwords. Results in Experiment 2 suggest that at least part of the reason for the vowel-consonant difference is because of the hi...

Effects of stimulus font and size on masked repetition priming: An event-related potentials (ERP) investigation.

Abstract: The size and font of target words were manipulated in a masked repetition priming paradigm with ERP recordings. Repetition priming effects were found in four ERP components: the N/P150, N250, P325, and N400. Neither a change in font nor a change in size across prime and target were found to affect repetition priming in the N250, P325, and N400 components. Changing font was, however, found to affect repetition priming in the N/P150 component, while the interaction between repetition priming and size was not significant in this component. These results confirm our interpretation of the N/P150 as a component sensitive to feature-level processing, and suggest that the type of prelexical and lexical processing reflected in the N250, P325, and N400 components is performed on representations that are invariant to changes in both font and size.

Processing dependencies between segmental and suprasegmental features in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine processing interactions between segmental (consonant, vowel) and suprasegmental (tone) dimensions of Mandarin Chinese. Using a speeded classification paradigm, processing interactions were examined between each pair of dimensions. Listeners were asked to attend to one dimension while ignoring the variation along another. Asymmetric interference effects were observed between segmental and suprasegmental dimensions, with segmental dimensions interfering more with tone classification than the reverse. Among the three dimensions, vowels exerted greater interference on consonants and tones than vice versa. Comparisons between each pair of dimensions revealed greater integrality between tone and vowel than between tone and consonant. Findings suggest that the direction and degree of interference between segmental and suprasegmental dimensions in spoken word recognition reflect differences in acoustic properties as well as other factors of an informational nature.

A tale of two frequencies: Determining the speed of lexical access for Mandarin Chinese and English compounds

Abstract: Two picture naming experiments show that compound word production in Mandarin Chinese and in English is determined by the compound's whole-word frequency, and not by its constituent morpheme frequency. Four control experiments rule out that these results are caused by recognition or articulatory processes. These results are consistent with models of lexical access that assume compounds are stored in their full-form and that frequency affects the retrieval of whole words. The present results corroborate the results from previous studies that have investigated compound word production in Mandarin Chinese, but also differ from those previously reported on compound word production in Dutch. The possibility that this inconsistency arises due to cross-linguistic, or task differences is discussed.

Saying the right word at the right time: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic interference in sentence production.

Abstract: Retrieving a word in a sentence requires speakers to overcome syntagmatic, as well as paradigmatic interference. When accessing cat in ‘The cat chased the string’, not only are similar competitors such as dog and cap activated, but also other words in the planned sentence, such as chase and string. We hypothesise that both types of interference impact the same stage of lexical access, and review connectionist models of production that use an error-driven learning algorithm to overcome that interference. This learning algorithm creates a mechanism that limits syntagmatic interference, the syntactic ‘traffic cop’, a configuration of excitatory and inhibitory connections from syntactic-sequential states to lexical units. We relate the models to word and sentence production data, from both normal and aphasic speakers.

The interplay of syntax and form in sentence production: A cross-linguistic study of form effects on agreement

Abstract: We report four cross-linguistic experiments (in Spanish, Italian and French) testing the influence of morphophonological gender marking in the subject noun phrase on the production of gender agreement. Agreement errors are elicited using a methodology in which participants are required to complete, with a predicative adjective, a sentence preamble. Results confirm a role for morphophonological gender marking in agreement. More precisely, we show that this role varies with two factors of different nature. The first factor is structural and has to do with the position of the marker in the noun phrase (article vs. noun). The second factor is distributional and has to do with the validity of the marker in the language. A model of agreement production is proposed in which two functionally distinct processes are identified: Feature selection, the locus of the morphophonological influences, and Feature copy, operating under strict syntactic guidance.

Agreement and attraction in Russian

Abstract: We assessed whether and under what conditions noncanonical agreement patterns occur in Russian, with the goal of understanding the factors involved in normal agreement. Russian is a morphosyntactically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, gender, and case. If consistent, overt specification of number and gender agreement features supports agreement processes in language production, agreement should be less vulnerable to number and gender attraction than in languages with sparse agreement morphology. A related question was the degree to which notional number influences agreement patterns in morphologically rich languages. We varied the grammatical and notional number properties of sentence subjects and examined the effects on the predicate in sentence completion tasks using native Russian speakers. Noncanonical agreement occurred, but at rates lower than those observed in English and other languages without rich number morphology. Noncanonically plural predicates occurred more oft...

Priming in sentence comprehension: Strategic or syntactic?

Abstract: Two eye-tracking experiments and two self-paced reading experiments investigated processing of sentences containing reduced relative clauses. Processing of a reduced relative is facilitated when it is preceded by a sentence that has the same syntactic structure, as long as the preceding sentence contains the same critical verb as the target (LeDoux, Traxler, & Swaab, 2007; Pickering & Traxler, 2004; Traxler & Pickering, 2005). This study tests whether facilitative effects result from readers using the prime sentence as a strategic cue to predict an upcoming reduced relative target. This hypothesis was tested in three ways. In the first experiment, properties of the filler items were manipulated to reduce or eliminate the strategic value of repeated verbs as a structural cue. In the second experiment, noun overlap, rather than verb overlap, created a valid strategic cue to the upcoming sentence structure. In the third experiment, readers were warned that a reduced relative sentence would be forthcoming. Si...

Morphological effects in auditory word recognition: Evidence from Danish

Abstract: In this study, we investigate the processing of morphologically complex words in Danish using auditory lexical decision. We document a second critical point in auditory comprehension in addition to the Uniqueness Point (UP), namely the point at which competing morphological continuation forms of the base cease to be compatible with the input, henceforth the Complex Uniqueness Point (CUP). Suffixed words with later CUP elicited longer response latencies. We also observed an interaction between suffix frequency and whole-word frequency. Both suffix and whole-word frequency were facilitatory, except for words for which both frequencies are high. For such words, we observed inhibition, and most clearly so for female compared with male participants. Finally, a comparison of complex with simple words revealed that, other things being equal, complex words have a processing advantage compared to simple words. We discuss the consequences of these findings for models of morphological processing.

Does darkness lead to happiness? Masked suffix priming effects

Abstract: Masked affix priming effects have usually been obtained for words sharing the initial affix (e.g., re action- RE FORM). However, prior evidence on masked suffix priming effects (e.g., bak er -WALK ER ) is inconclusive. In the present series of masked priming lexical decision experiments, a target word was briefly preceded by a morphologically or orthographically related prime, or by an unrelated prime. In Experiment 1, the prime words in the suffix priming condition were formed by their suffixes (e.g., er -WALK ER ). In Experiment 2, the primes included the suffix inserted in a nonsense symbol string (e.g., %%%% er -WALK ER ). In Experiment 3, the primes were formed by a real word that shared the suffix with the target (e.g., bak er -WALK ER ). The results showed that, when compared with an orthographic priming condition, masked suffix priming can be obtained independently of the degree of segmentation of the prime. Furthermore, the present experiments reveal a clear dissociation between orthographic prim...

Masked form priming with extreme transposition

Abstract: Using eight-letter words, masked form-priming is examined with more extreme versions of transposed primes than are normally considered. Strong priming effects are observed when as few as two out of eight letters are correctly positioned within the prime, indicating that the word recognition system is surprisingly flexible with regard to letter position. Three prominent models of letter position coding are considered in light of the observed data. The comparison between models focuses on the assumptions and mechanisms within each. Strengths and weaknesses are identified for all approaches. Some evidence is found in support of differential weighting of letter positions, although the more specific question of whether it is exterior or initial letters that are most crucial to word recognition remains unresolved.

An electrophysiological investigation of early effects of masked morphological priming

Abstract: This experiment examined event-related responses to targets preceded by semantically transparent morphologically related primes (e.g., farmer-farm), semantically opaque primes with an apparent morphological relation (corner-corn), and orthographically, but not morphologically, related primes (scandal-scan) using the masked priming technique combined with a semantic categorisation task. In order to provide information about possible early effects of morphology we focused our analysis on the N250 ERP component. Priming effects for transparent and opaque items patterned together in the early phase of the N250 (200–250 ms), whereas the transparent and orthographic items patterned together in the latter phase of this component (250–300 ms). These results provide further evidence in support of the rapid extraction of morphemes from morphologically complex stimuli independently of the semantic relatedness of the whole and its parts.

Decomposition into multiple morphemes during lexical access: A masked priming study of Russian nouns

Abstract: The study reports the results of a masked priming experiment with morphologically complex Russian nouns. Participants performed a lexical decision task to a visual target that differed from its prime in one consonant. Three conditions were included: (1) transparent, in which the prime was morphologically related to the target and contained the diminutive suffix -k, e.g., gorka ‘little mountain’ – gora ‘mountain’; (2) pseudo-derived, in which there was an apparent but false morphological relation between the prime and the target similar to that in the transparent condition, e.g., lunka ‘hole’ – luna ‘moon’; and (3) form, in which the phonological/orthographic overlap between the prime and the target was coincidental and could not be misanalysed as due to morphological reasons, e.g., as parta ‘desk’ – para ‘pair’. A facilitatory priming effect was found for targets in the transparent and pseudo-derived conditions but not in the form condition. The findings support the hypothesis that at an early stage of le...

The processing of compound words in English: Effects of word length on eye movements during reading

Abstract: Two experiments are reported which investigated morphological processing in English using bilexemic compound words. Long and short compound words were presented in neutral sentences and eye movements were recorded while participants read the sentences to investigate the time course of compound word recognition. In Experiment 1, the frequency of the beginning lexeme was manipulated in addition to word length while in Experiment 2 rated frequency was manipulated. These experiments represented attempts to extend Bertram and Hyona's (2003) work with Finnish compounds to English and to test the parallel dual-route model of compound processing. Predictions from this model would be that only long compound words should demonstrate a beginning lexeme frequency effect and short compound words should show an earlier effect of whole-word frequency. Contrary to this, short compound words did show a large beginning lexeme frequency effect as well as whole word frequency effects. These results will be problematic for pa...

Fully transparent orthography, yet lexical reading aloud: The lexicality effect in Italian

Abstract: This is the first study that reports the lexicality effect (i.e., words read better than nonwords) in Italian with fully transparent and methodologically well-controlled stimuli. We investigated how words and nonwords are read aloud in the Italian transparent orthography, in which there is an almost strict one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Contrary to the claim that in such orthography word naming is accomplished primarily by the nonlexical assembly route, we found that words were named faster than nonwords, regardless of their frequency (high or low) or the composition of the experimental list (pure vs. mixed blocks). These findings show that the lexical route is the main one used by readers even in a language with a transparent orthography.

Do orthotactics and phonology constrain the transposed-letter effect?

Abstract: Transposing two internal letters of a word produces a perceptually similar item (as in cholocate). To determine the precise nature of the encoding of letter position within a word, it is important to examine the role of orthography and phonology in the transposed-letter effect. Experiment 1 examined whether transposed-letter effects are affected by the legality of the letter transposition in a masked priming paradigm (e.g., comsos-COSMOS vs. vebral-VERBAL; ‘ms’ is an illegal bigram in Spanish). Results showed a greater transposed-letter priming effect when the transposed bigram was illegal than when it was legal. In Experiment 2, we examine the role of phonology by exploiting the context-dependent pronunciation of the consonant letter ‘c’ in a masked priming paradigm with the lexical decision task. Results showed that the magnitude of the transposed-letter effect was approximately the same for pairs like cholocate-CHOCOLATE vs. chodonate-CHOCOLATE and for pairs like racidal-RADICAL vs. ramibal-RADICAL. We...

Are CORNER and BROTHER morphologically complex? Not in the long term

Abstract: Previous studies haves shown that under masked priming conditions, CORNER primes CORN as strongly as TEACHER primes TEACH and more strongly than BROTHEL primes BROTH. This result has been taken as evidence of a purely structural level of representation at which words are decomposed into morphological constituents in a manner that is independent of semantics. The research reported here investigated the influence of semantic transparency on long-term morphological priming. Two experiments demonstrated that while lexical decisions were facilitated by semantically transparent primes like TEACHER, semantically opaque words like CORNER had no effect. Although differences in the nonword foils used in each experiment gave rise to somewhat different patterns of results, this difference in the effects of transparent and opaque primes was found in both experiments. The implications of this finding for accounts of morphological effects on visual word identification are discussed.

When hearsay trumps evidence: How generic language guides preschoolers’ inferences about unfamiliar things

Abstract: Two experiments investigated 4-year-olds' use of descriptive sentences to learn non-obvious properties of unfamiliar kinds. Novel creatures were described using generic or nongeneric sentences (e.g., These are pagons. Pagons / These pagons are friendly). Children's willingness to extend the described property to a new category member was then measured. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that children reliably extended the property to new instances after hearing generic but not nongeneric sentences. Further, the influence of generic language was much greater than effects related to the amount of tangible evidence provided (the number of creatures bearing the critical property). Experiment 2 revealed that children continued to extend properties mentioned in generic descriptions even when incompatible evidence was presented (e.g., an example of an unfriendly ‘pagon’). The findings underscore preschoolers' keen understanding of the semantics of generic sentences and suggest that inferences based on gene...

Contrasting effects of token and type syllable frequency in lexical decision

Abstract: In psycholinguistic research, there is still considerable debate about whether the type or token count of the frequency of a particular unit of language better predicts word recognition performance. The present study extends this distinction of type and token measures to the investigation of possible causes underlying syllable frequency effects. In two lexical decision experiments, we found a dissociation suggesting that the token measure of syllable frequency adequately predicts the inhibitory effect of initial syllable frequency, whereas the type measure led to facilitation, especially when the number of higher frequency syllabic neighbours was controlled for. This specific pattern of results, suggesting the involvement of two different processes in effects of syllable frequency, provides a strong constraint for current and future models of visual word recognition.

Neighbourhood density and frequency effects in speech production: A case for interactivity

Abstract: In three experiments, we explore the effects of phonological properties such as neighbourhood density and frequency on speech production in Spanish. Specifically, we assess the reliability of the recent observation made by Vitevitch and Stamer (2006), according to which the neighbourhood effect in Spanish has a reverse polarity to that observed in other languages. In Experiment 1, we replicate Vitevitch and Stamer's (2006) experiment, this time adding a control group. The same inhibitory neighbourhood effect found for both groups can not corroborate the hypothesis posited by Vitevitch and Stamer. In Experiment 2, our results show that native speakers of Spanish named pictures with words belonging to high density neighbourhoods faster than those belonging to low density neighbourhoods. In Experiment 3, we test for effects of neighbourhood frequency during lexical selection. Again, we find a facilitatory effect for words with a high-frequency neighbourhood. Together, the results of the present experiments s...