Showing papers on "Lexical decision task published in 2019"
TL;DR: This work describes the collection of word associations for over 12,000 cue words, currently the largest such English-language resource in the world, and shows that measures based on a mechanism of spreading activation derived from this new resource are highly predictive of direct judgments of similarity.
Abstract: Word associations have been used widely in psychology, but the validity of their application strongly depends on the number of cues included in the study and the extent to which they probe all associations known by an individual. In this work, we address both issues by introducing a new English word association dataset. We describe the collection of word associations for over 12,000 cue words, currently the largest such English-language resource in the world. Our procedure allowed subjects to provide multiple responses for each cue, which permits us to measure weak associations. We evaluate the utility of the dataset in several different contexts, including lexical decision and semantic categorization. We also show that measures based on a mechanism of spreading activation derived from this new resource are highly predictive of direct judgments of similarity. Finally, a comparison with existing English word association sets further highlights systematic improvements provided through these new norms.
192 citations
TL;DR: The authors proposed a localist-connectionist model, called Multilink, which integrates basic assumptions of both BIA+ and RHM, to simulate the recognition and production of cognates and non-cognates of different lengths and frequencies.
Abstract: The computational BIA+ model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002) has provided a useful account for bilingual word recognition, while the verbal (pre-quantitative) RHM (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) has often served as a reference framework for bilingual word production and translation. According to Brysbaert and Duyck (2010), a strong need is felt for a unified implemented account of bilingual word comprehension, lexical-semantic processing, and word production. With this goal in mind, we built a localist-connectionist model, called Multilink, which integrates basic assumptions of both BIA+ and RHM. It simulates the recognition and production of cognates (form-similar translation equivalents) and non-cognates of different lengths and frequencies in tasks like monolingual and bilingual lexical decision, word naming, and word translation production. It also considers effects of lexical similarity, cognate status, relative L2-proficiency, and translation direction. Model-to-model comparisons show that Multilink provides higher correlations with empirical data than both IA and BIA+ models.
157 citations
TL;DR: Word prevalence predicts word processing times, over and above the effects of word frequency, word length, similarity to other words, and age of acquisition, in line with previous findings in the Dutch language.
Abstract: We present word prevalence data for 61,858 English words. Word prevalence refers to the number of people who know the word. The measure was obtained on the basis of an online crowdsourcing study involving over 220,000 people. Word prevalence data are useful for gauging the difficulty of words and, as such, for matching stimulus materials in experimental conditions or selecting stimulus materials for vocabulary tests. Word prevalence also predicts word processing times, over and above the effects of word frequency, word length, similarity to other words, and age of acquisition, in line with previous findings in the Dutch language.
84 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present word prevalence data for 61,858 English words, which refers to the number of people who know the word and is useful for measuring the difficulty of words.
Abstract: We present word prevalence data for 61,858 English words. Word prevalence refers to the number of people who know the word. The measure was obtained on the basis of an online crowdsourcing study involving over 220,000 people. Word prevalence data are useful for gauging the difficulty of words and, as such, for matching stimulus materials in experimental conditions or selecting stimulus materials for vocabulary tests. Word prevalence also predicts word processing times, over and above the effects of word frequency, word length, similarity to other words, and age of acquisition, in line with previous findings in the Dutch language.
67 citations
TL;DR: The Massive Auditory Lexical Decision database is an end-to-end, freely available auditory and production data set for speech and psycholinguistic research, providing time-aligned stimulus recordings and response data for 227,179 auditory lexical decisions from 231 unique monolingual English listeners.
Abstract: The Massive Auditory Lexical Decision (MALD) database is an end-to-end, freely available auditory and production data set for speech and psycholinguistic research, providing time-aligned stimulus recordings for 26,793 words and 9592 pseudowords, and response data for 227,179 auditory lexical decisions from 231 unique monolingual English listeners. In addition to the experimental data, we provide many precompiled listener- and item-level descriptor variables. This data set makes it easy to explore responses, build and test theories, and compare a wide range of models. We present summary statistics and analyses.
55 citations
TL;DR: The hypothesis that a subregion of ventral visual cortex may be specialized for the perception of multiletter graphemes such as “ch” or “ou” is tested, and results suggest a medial-to-lateral division of labor within the ventral occipitotemporal cortex.
Abstract: Efficient reading requires a fast conversion of the written word to both phonological and semantic codes. We tested the hypothesis that, within the left occipitotemporal cortical regions involved in visual word recognition, distinct subregions harbor slightly different orthographic codes adapted to those 2 functions. While the lexico-semantic pathway may operate on letter or open-bigram information, the phonological pathway requires the identification of multiletter graphemes such as "ch" or "ou" in order to map them onto phonemes. To evaluate the existence of a specific stage of graphemic encoding, 20 adults performed lexical decision and naming tasks on words and pseudowords during functional MRI. Graphemic encoding was facilitated or disrupted by coloring and spacing the letters either congruently with multiletter graphemes (ch-ai-r) or incongruently with them (c-ha-ir). This manipulation affected behavior, primarily during the naming of pseudowords, and modulated brain activity in the left midfusiform sulcus, at a site medial to the classical visual word form area (VWFA). This putative grapheme-related area (GRA) differed from the VWFA in being preferentially connected functionally to dorsal parietal areas involved in letter-by-letter reading, while the VWFA showed effects of lexicality and spelling-to-sound regularity. Our results suggest a partial dissociation within left occipitotemporal cortex: the midfusiform GRA would encode orthographic information at a sublexical graphemic level, while the lateral occipitotemporal VWFA would contribute primarily to direct lexico-semantic access.
44 citations
TL;DR: In analyses using the new BOI norms, it is found that high-BOI words tended to be more concrete, more graspable, and more strongly associated with sensory, haptic, and visual experience than are low- BOI words.
Abstract: Ratings of body–object interaction (BOI) measure the ease with which the human body can interact with a word’s referent. Researchers have studied the effects of BOI in order to investigate the relationships between sensorimotor and cognitive processes. Such efforts could be improved, however, by the availability of more extensive BOI norms. In the present work, we collected BOI ratings for over 9,000 words. These new norms show good reliability and validity and have extensive overlap with the words used both in other lexical and semantic norms and in the available behavioral megastudies (e.g., the English Lexicon Project, Balota, Yap, Cortese, Hutchison, Kessler, & Loftis in Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445–459, 2007; and the Calgary Semantic Decision Project, Pexman, Heard, Lloyd, & Yap in Behavior Research Methods, 49, 407–417, 2017). In analyses using the new BOI norms, we found that high-BOI words tended to be more concrete, more graspable, and more strongly associated with sensory, haptic, and visual experience than are low-BOI words. When we used the new norms to predict response latencies and accuracy data from the behavioral megastudies, we found that BOI was a stronger predictor of responses in the semantic decision task than in the lexical decision task. These findings are consistent with a dynamic, multidimensional account of lexical semantics. The norms described here should be useful for future research examining the effects of sensorimotor experience on performance in tasks involving word stimuli.
39 citations
TL;DR: The results contribute to understand the interface between language and social-norm processing indicating that lexical processing is affected by socio-pragmatic knowledge, but only when the speaker has a contextual use of the language.
37 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated the extent to which this interaction during development could be observed in language processing, focusing on age of acquisition (AoA) effects in reading, where early-learned words tend to be processed more quickly and accurately relative to later learned words.
33 citations
TL;DR: A novel meta-analysis using the updated activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach on fMRI data from 345 native English speakers published from 1992 to 2014, comparing neural correlates between single word reading (SWR); and lexical decision tasks (LDT).
31 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that the emotion effect of emotion-label words occurs earlier than that of emotions-laden words, but this difference is limited to the positive valence category.
TL;DR: Conventional psycholinguistic experiments and an archival analysis of the English Lexicon Project were conducted to investigate the influence of 2 network science metrics derived from the phonographic network—phonographic degree and phonographic clustering coefficient—on spoken and visual word recognition.
Abstract: Orthographic effects in spoken word recognition and phonological effects in visual word recognition have been observed in a variety of experimental tasks, strongly suggesting that a close interrelationship exists between phonology and orthography. However, the metrics used to investigate these effects, such as consistency and neighborhood size, fail to generalize to words of various lengths or syllable structures, and do not take into account the more global similarity structure that exists between phonological and orthographic representations in the language. To address these limitations, the tools of Network Science were used to simultaneously characterize the phonological as well as orthographic similarity structure of words in English. In the phonographic network of language, links are placed between words that are both phonologically and orthographically similar to each other (e.g., words such as pant (/paent/) and punt (/pʌnt/)). Conventional psycholinguistic experiments (auditory naming and auditory lexical decision) and an archival analysis of the English Lexicon Project (visual naming and visual lexical decision) were conducted to investigate the influence of 2 network science metrics derived from the phonographic network-phonographic degree and phonographic clustering coefficient-on spoken and visual word recognition. Results indicated a facilitatory effect of phonographic degree on visual word recognition, and a facilitatory effect of phonographic clustering coefficient on spoken word recognition. Implications of the present findings for theoretical models of spoken and visual word recognition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
TL;DR: For instance, this paper collected ratings for 621 words on seven semantic dimensions (graspability, ease of pantomime, number of actions, animacy, size, danger, and usefulness) to investigate which attributes are most strongly related to BOI ratings, and to lexical-semantic processing.
Abstract: One of the strategies that researchers have used to investigate the role of sensorimotor information in lexical-semantic processing is to examine effects of words’ rated body-object interaction (BOI; the ease with which the human body can interact with a word’s referent). Processing tends to be facilitated for words with high BOI compared to words with low BOI, across a wide variety of tasks. Such effects have been referenced in debates over the nature of semantic representations, but their theoretical import has been limited by the fact that BOI is a fairly coarse measure of sensorimotor experience with words’ referents. In the present study we collected ratings for 621 words on seven semantic dimensions (graspability, ease of pantomime, number of actions, animacy, size, danger, and usefulness) in order to investigate which attributes are most strongly related to BOI ratings, and to lexical-semantic processing. BOI ratings were obtained from previous norming studies (Bennett, Burnett, Siakaluk, & Pexman, 2011; Tillotson, Siakaluk, & Pexman, 2008) and measures of lexical-semantic processing were obtained from previous behavioural megastudies involving the semantic categorization task (concrete/abstract decision; Pexman, Heard, Lloyd, & Yap, 2017) and the lexical decision task (Balota et al., 2007). Results showed that the motor dimension of graspability, ease of pantomime, and number of actions were all related to BOI and that these dimensions together explained more variance in semantic processing than did BOI ratings alone. These ratings will be useful for researchers who wish to study how different kinds of bodily interactions influence lexical-semantic processing and cognition.
TL;DR: At late processing stages, semantic control mechanisms seem to integrate emotional cues depending on the previous progress of semantic retrieval, which points towards enhanced semantic control for emotional concrete words compared to neutral concrete words.
Abstract: Emotional valence is known to influence word processing dependent upon concreteness. Whereas some studies point towards stronger effects of emotion on concrete words, others claim amplified emotion effects for abstract words. We investigated the interaction of emotion and concreteness by means of fMRI and EEG in a delayed lexical decision task. Behavioral data revealed a facilitating effect of high positive and negative valence on the correct processing of abstract, but not concrete words. EEG data yielded a particularly low amplitude response of the late positive component (LPC) following concrete neutral words. This presumably indicates enhanced allocation of processing resources to abstract and emotional words at late stages of word comprehension. In fMRI, interactions between concreteness and emotion were observed within the semantic processing network: the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Higher positive or negative valence appears to facilitate semantic retrieval and selection of abstract words. Surprisingly, a reversal of this effect occurred for concrete words. This points towards enhanced semantic control for emotional concrete words compared to neutral concrete words. Our findings suggest fine-tuned integration of emotional valence and concreteness. Specifically, at late processing stages, semantic control mechanisms seem to integrate emotional cues depending on the previous progress of semantic retrieval.
TL;DR: The findings indicate that lexical decision times better resemble the average processing time of multiple presentations of the same word, across different language contexts.
Abstract: In the present study we assessed the extent to which different word recognition time measures converge, using large databases of lexical decision times and eyetracking measures. We observed a low proportion of shared variance between these measures, which limits the validity of lexical decision times to real-life reading. We further investigated and compared the role of word frequency and length, two important predictors of word-processing latencies in these paradigms, and found that they influenced the measures to different extents. A second analysis of two different eyetracking corpora compared the eyetracking reading times for short paragraphs with those from reading of an entire book. Our results revealed that the correlations between eyetracking reading times of identical words in two different corpora are also low, suggesting that the higher-order language context in which words are presented plays a crucial role. Finally, our findings indicate that lexical decision times better resemble the average processing time of multiple presentations of the same word, across different language contexts.
TL;DR: An increasing number of psycholinguistic studies have adopted a megastudy approach to explore the role that different variables play in the speed and/or accuracy with which words are recognized as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: An increasing number of psycholinguistic studies have adopted a megastudy approach to explore the role that different variables play in the speed and/or accuracy with which words are recognised and...
TL;DR: Children showed sensitivity to word valence in lexical processing, at a younger age than had been established in previous research, and their language skills were related to their improved processing of more abstract neutral words between 6 and 7 years of age.
TL;DR: It is proposed that the early neighborhood effects for words across tasks were driven by highly automatized word identification processes that were sensitive to the lateral inhibition generated by orthographicNeighborhood effects for pseudowords in the LDT could have been driven by task-specific processes tied to how global lexical activity is used to make a lexical decision.
TL;DR: It is reported that, when processing visually presented compound words, semantic access at some level occurs as early as the P100 and persists through to the N400, support models which emphasize simultaneous processing of form and meaning as opposed to serial or hierarchical approaches.
TL;DR: This article examined the relationship between flexibility for adaptation in second language (L2) and robustness of L2 phonolexical representations and found that rigidity at the phonetic level relates to better lexical performance.
Abstract: Listening to speech entails adapting to vast amounts of variability in the signal. The present study examined the relationship between flexibility for adaptation in a second language (L2) and robustness of L2 phonolexical representations. Phonolexical encoding and phonetic flexibility for German learners of English were assessed by means of a lexical decision task containing nonwords with sound substitutions and a distributional learning task, respectively. Performance was analyzed for an easy (/i/-/ɪ/) and a difficult contrast (/e/-/ae/, where /ae/ does not exist in German). Results showed that for /i/-/ɪ/ listeners were quite accurate in lexical decision, and distributional learning consistently triggered shifts in categorization. For /e/-/ae/, lexical decision performance was poor but individual participants’ scores related to performance in distributional learning: the better learners were in their lexical decision, the smaller their categorization shift. This suggests that, for difficult L2 contrasts, rigidity at the phonetic level relates to better lexical performance.
TL;DR: The present results suggest flexible conceptual representations depending on context and task, and only provide limited evidence in favor of grounded cognition theories assuming a close link between the conceptual and the sensorimotor systems.
Abstract: Recent theories propose a flexible recruitment of sensory and motor brain regions during conceptual processing depending on context and task. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated the influence of context and task on conceptual processing of action and sound verbs. Participants first performed an explicit semantic context decision task, in which action and sound verbs were presented together with a context noun. The same verbs were repeatedly presented in a subsequent implicit lexical decision task together with new action and sound verbs. Thereafter, motor and acoustic localizer tasks were administered to identify brain regions involved in perception and action. During the explicit task, we found differential activations to action and sound verbs near corresponding sensorimotor brain regions. During the implicit lexical decision task, differences between action and sound verbs were absent. However, feature-specific repetition effects were observed near corresponding sensorimotor brain regions. The present results suggest flexible conceptual representations depending on context and task. Feature-specific effects were observed only near, but not within corresponding sensorimotor brain regions, as defined by the localizer tasks. Our results therefore only provide limited evidence in favor of grounded cognition theories assuming a close link between the conceptual and the sensorimotor systems.
TL;DR: Learning discriminatively about inflectional paradigms and classes, and about their contextual or syntagmatic embedding, sheds light on human language-processing efficiency and on the fascinating complexity of naturally emerged language systems.
TL;DR: The results suggest that the age at which a word is initially learned as well as its frequency trajectory across childhood impact performance in the lexical-decision task.
Abstract: Word frequency is an important predictor of lexical-decision task performance. The current study further examined the role of this variable by exploring the influence of frequency trajectory. Frequency trajectory is measured by how often a word occurs in childhood relative to adulthood. Past research on the role of this variable in word recognition has produced equivocal results. In the current study, words were selected based on their frequencies in Grade 1 (child frequency) and Grade 13 (college frequency). In Experiment 1, four frequency trajectory conditions were factorially examined in a lexical-decision task with English words: high-to-high (world), high-to-low (uncle), low-to-high (brain) and low-to-low (opera). an interaction between Grade 1 and college frequency demonstrated that words in the low-to-high condition were processed significantly faster and more accurately than words in the low-to-low condition, whereas the high-to-high and high-to-low conditions did not differ significantly. In Experiment 2, an advantage for words with an increasing frequency trajectory was also supported in regression analyses on both lexical decision and naming times for 3,039 items selected from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007). This was replicated in Experiment 3, based on a regression analysis of 2,680 words from the British Lexicon Project (BLP; Keuleers, Lacey, Rastle, & Brysbaert, 2012). In all analyses, rated age-of-acquisition also significantly impacted word recognition. Together, the results suggest that the age at which a word is initially learned as well as its frequency trajectory across childhood impact performance in the lexical-decision task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
TL;DR: This study demonstrates the M1's causal involvement in the earliest phases of word learning and rapid encoding of semantic motor information and category-specific effects of TMS on word learning.
TL;DR: Overall, this demonstrates that as long as diacritics are used in scripts to distinguish between lexical entries, the diacritic letters are not mere variants of their base letters but constitute unitary elements of the script in their own right, with diacritical marks contributing to the overall visual shape of a letter.
Abstract: Understanding the front end of visual word recognition requires us to identify the processes by which letters are identified. Since most of the work on letter recognition has been conducted in English, letter perception modeling has been limited to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet. However, many writing systems include letters with diacritic marks. In the present study, we examined whether diacritic letters are a mere variant of their base letter, and thus share the same abstract representation, or whether they function as separate elements from any other letters, and thus have separate representations. In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants performed an alphabetical decision task combined with masked priming. Target letters were preceded by the same letter (e.g., a–A), by a diacritic letter (e.g., â–A), or by an unrelated letter (e.g., z–A). The results showed that the primes sharing nominal identity (e.g., a) facilitated target processing as compared to unrelated primes (e.g., z), but that primes that included a diacritic mark (e.g., â) did not, with reaction times being similar to those in the unrelated priming condition. In Experiment 2 we replicated these results in a lexical decision task. Overall, this demonstrates that as long as diacritics are used in scripts to distinguish between lexical entries, the diacritic letters are not mere variants of their base letters but constitute unitary elements of the script in their own right, with diacritics contributing to the overall visual shape of a letter.
TL;DR: Results showed that reliable mirror-letter interference effects were observed only for d-words in both adult skilled readers and fifth-grade children, which asks for additional amendments in the current computational models of visual word recognition.
TL;DR: A pattern of findings can be accommodated within those models of word recognition that assume uncertainty concerning letter identities early in word processing that is resolved over time.
Abstract: Visual similarity effects during the early stages of word processing have been consistently found for letter-like digits and symbols. However, despite its relevance for models of word recognition, evidence for letter visual-similarity effects is scarce and restricted to behavioral experiments. In two masked priming experiments, we measured event-related potential (ERP) responses to words preceded by an identical (dentist-DENTIST), a visually similar (dentjst-DENTIST), or a visually dissimilar prime (dentgst-DENTIST) to track the time course of the effects of letter visual-similarity during word processing. In the 230- to 350-ms time window, the ERPs in the visual dissimilar condition showed larger negative-going amplitudes than in the visual similar condition, which in turn behaved like the identity condition. In a later time window (400-500 ms), the visually similar condition elicited larger negative-going amplitudes than the identity condition. This pattern of findings can be accommodated within those models of word recognition that assume uncertainty concerning letter identities early in word processing that is resolved over time.
TL;DR: The results show robust compound priming effects, independently of semantics, and Activation of embedded stems is a starting point in children’s reading acquisition.
TL;DR: The results showed that primed participants had more autobiographical memories overlapping with the primed concepts than control participants, and supported the semantic-autobiographical memory-priming hypothesis.
Abstract: This study investigated the idea that semantic memory activation causes the activation of associated autobiographical memories (e.g., reading the word summer activates knowledge representations in semantic memory, as well as associated personal memories about summer in autobiographical memory). We tested this semantic-autobiographical memory priming hypothesis in three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were primed with concepts (e.g., summer) on a familiarity task and were then given a word-cue voluntary autobiographical memory task. In support of the hypothesis, the results showed that primed participants had more autobiographical memories overlapping with the primed concepts than control participants. In Experiment 2, participants were similarly primed, but in this case they were given a measure of involuntary autobiographical memory (i.e., Schlagman and Kvavilashvili’s (Memory & Cognition, 36, 920–932, 2008) vigilance task). The results of this experiment also supported the semantic-autobiographical memory-priming hypothesis. Experiment 3 ruled out an alternative possibility (i.e., that autobiographical memory processing had occurred in the word familiarity task) by showing that semantic-autobiographical priming had resulted from a priming task (lexical decision) where autobiographical memory processing was unlikely. The implications of these findings are discussed.
TL;DR: Three lexical decision experiments with TL and replacement-letter pseudowords that manipulated the visual characteristics of the stimuli showed that the robustness of the TL effect suggests that letter position coding also has an orthographic abstract component.
Abstract: A plethora of studies has revealed that letter position coding is relatively flexible during word recognition (e.g., the transposed-letter [TL] pseudoword CHOLOCATE is frequently misread as CHOCOLA...