Bilingualism and Lexical Representation

1980 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Kirsner ◽  
Heather L. Brown ◽  
S. Abrol ◽  
N. K. Chadha ◽  
N. K. Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Letter String ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
New Words ◽  
Factorial Combination ◽  
Repeated Words

Forty-eight Hindi-English bilinguals completed two blocks of trials where each trial involved presentation of a letter string requiring a lexical decision. In the first block subjects were exposed to 22 words and 11 non-words in either English or Hindi. In the second block the original words were repeated in either the same language or in the alternative language. In this block the old (repeated) words were mixed with 22 new words, and 22 non-words. Twelve subjects were included in each of the four groups given by the factorial combination of blocks and languages. Reaction time in the lexical decision task was facilitated when words were repeated in the same language (109 and 125 ms in the English-English and Hindi-Hindi groups respectively), but little or no facilitation was observed in the inter-lingual conditions (-22 and 23 ms in the Hindi-English and English-Hindi conditions respectively). The results support the view that lexical representation in bilinguals is language-specific.

Aphasia, Dyslexia and the Phonological Coding of Written Words

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. E. Patterson ◽  
A. J. Marcel
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Letter String ◽  
Phonological Code ◽  
Reading Difficulty ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Modified Technique ◽  
Phonological Coding ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Conversion Rules

A possible account of the reading difficulty of certain aphasic-dyslexic patients includes the notion that they are impaired in translating the written word into a phonological code via grapheme-phoneme conversion rules. This notion was tested in two experiments, both utilizing orthographically regular non-words (like dake) as stimuli. The first experiment provides an analysis of two patients' (largely successful) attempts to repeat non-words, and their (almost totally unsuccessful) attempts to read them. Second, in a lexical decision task (is this written letter-string a word or not?), the finding that normals are slowed by non-words homophonic with real words (like flore) was replicated using a modified technique. This effect, attributable to phonological coding, was not shown by the patients. At the same time, their ability to discriminate between words and non-words was essentially intact. Consideration was given to mechanisms which might underlie such patients' correct and erroneous readings of words and non-words.

Testing the storage of prosody-induced phonetic detail via auditory lexical decision

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-164
Author(s):  
Arne Lohmann ◽  
Benjamin V. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Environment Impact ◽  
Auditory Lexical Decision ◽  
Verb Bias ◽  
Phonetic Detail ◽  
Noun Bias

Abstract This article reports the results of an auditory lexical decision task, testing the processing of phonetic detail of English noun/verb conversion pairs. The article builds on recent findings showing that the frequent occurrence in certain prosodic environments may lead to the storage of prosody-induced phonetic detail as part of the lexical representation. To investigate this question with noun/verb conversion pairs, ambicategorical stimuli were used that exhibit systematic occurrence differences with regard to prosodic environment, as indicated by either a strong verb-bias, e.g., talk (N/V) or a strong noun-bias, e.g., voice (N/V). The auditory lexical decision task tests whether acoustic properties reflecting either the typical or the atypical prosodic environment impact the processing of recordings of the stimuli. In doing so assumptions about the storage of prosody-induced phonetic detail are tested that distinguish competing model architectures. The results are most straightforwardly accounted for within an abstractionist architecture, in which the acoustic signal is mapped onto a representation that is based on the canonical pronunciation of the word.

scholarly journals The Mechanism Underlying Backward Priming in a Lexical Decision Task: Spreading Activation versus Semantic Matching

1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothee J. Chwilla ◽  
Peter Hagoort ◽  
C.M. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Semantic Priming ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Spreading Activation ◽  
Semantic Matching ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Manipulation Experiment

Koriat (1981) demonstrated that an association from the target to a preceding prime, in the absence of an association from the prime to the target, facilitates lexical decision and referred to this effect as “backward priming”. Backward priming is of relevance, because it can provide information about the mechanism underlying semantic priming effects. Following Neely (1991), we distinguish three mechanisms of priming: spreading activation, expectancy, and semantic matching/ integration. The goal was to determine which of these mechanisms causes backward priming, by assessing effects of backward priming on a language-relevant ERP component, the N400, and reaction time (RT). Based on previous work, we propose that the N400 priming effect reflects expectancy and semantic matching/ integration, but in contrast with RT does not reflect spreading activation. Experiment 1 shows a backward priming effect that is qualitatively similar for the N400 and RT in a lexical decision task. This effect was not modulated by an ISI manipulation. Experiment 2 clarifies that the N400 backward priming effect reflects genuine changes in N400 amplitude and cannot be ascribed to other factors. We will argue that these backward priming effects cannot be due to expectancy but are best accounted for in terms of semantic matching/integration.

Electrifying the lexical decision

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Azevedo ◽  
Ruth Ann Atchley ◽  
Eva Kehayia
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Status ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Four Blocks

The current research utilizes lexical decision within an oddball ERP paradigm to study early lexical processing. Nineteen undergraduate students completed four blocks of the oddball lexical decision task (Nonword targets among Words, Word targets among Nonwords, Word targets among Pseudowords, and Pseudoword targets among Words). We observed a reliable P3 ERP component in conditions where the distinction between rare and frequent trials could be made solely based on lexical status (Words among Nonwords and Nonwords among Words). We saw a reliable P3 to rare words among frequent pseudowords, but no P3 was observed when participants were asked to detect pseudowords in the context of frequent word stimuli. We argue that this observed modulation of the P3 results is consistent with psycholinguistic literature that suggests that two criteria are available during lexical access when performing a lexicality judgement, a non-lexical criterion that relies on global activation at the word level and a lexical criterion that relies on activation of a lexical representation (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001; Grainger & Jacobs, 1996).

scholarly journals T-value and mutual information as measures of the association strength in Serbian language

Psihologija ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Lisac ◽  
Petar Milin
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Mutual Information ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Association Strength ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
Response Latencies

Since the study of Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971), a large number of researches have shown facilitation effect in cognitive processing of a given word when it is preceded by a semantically (i.e. associatively) related word. In this study, we examined influence of association strength between context and target on visual word processing in Serbian language. Primary goal was to test cognitive relevance of the t-value and mutual information (MI) as measures of the association strength. The results showed that the mutual information affects response latencies in the visual lexical decision task: the higher the mutual information for two words (bigram), the shorter the reaction time. Contrariwise, cognitive relevance of the t-value as a measure of the words' association strength was not confirmed.

Bilingual Lexical Representation: The Status of Spanish-English Cognates

1986 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Cristoffanini ◽  
Kim Kirsner ◽  
Dan Milech
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Functional Status ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Repetition Priming ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Organization ◽  
Critical Feature ◽  
General Proposition ◽  
The Status

Two experiments were conducted to determine the functional status of cognates. Two hypotheses were considered. According to the first hypothesis, language is a critical feature governing lexical organization, and cognates may therefore be equated with morphologically unrelated translations. According to a second hypothesis, however, language is not a critical feature governing lexical organization. Instead, the boundaries between perceptual categories are determined by morphological considerations, and cognates may therefore be equated with intra-lingual variations such as inflections and derivations. If the first hypothesis is correct, cognate performance should follow that observed for translations, but if the second hypothesis is correct, cognate performance should follow that observed for inflections and derivations. The experiments used different procedures in order to discount taskspecific explanations. The first experiment involved repetition priming in a lexical decision task, and emphasis was placed on relative priming; that is, on the amount of facilitation which occurs when, for example, OBEDIENCIA primes OBEDIENCE, expressed as a fraction of the amount of facilitation that occurs when the same word is presented on each occasion (i.e., when OBEDIENCE is used to prime OBEDIENCE). The second experiment tested memory for language. Four types of cognates were tested. These were: orthographically identical cognates, regular cognates with cion/tion substitution, regular cognates with dad/ty substitution, and irregularly derived cognates. The results were unequivocal. The priming values observed previously for cognates were qualitatively and quantitatively similar to those observed for inflections and derivations, and this classification was confirmed in the second experiment, involving memory for language. The results are consistent with the general proposition that morphology rather than language governs the boundaries between perceptual categories, and a number of specific explanations are reviewed.

Phonological Encoding in the Lexical Decision Task

1979 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Coltheart ◽  
Derek Besner ◽  
Jon Torfi Jonasson ◽  
Eileen Davelaar
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Letter String ◽  
Lexical Entry ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Phonological Recoding ◽  
Phonological Encoding ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Correspondence Rules

In lexical decision experiments, subjects have difficulty in responding NO to non-words which are pronounced exactly like English words (e.g. BRANE). This does not necessarily imply that access to a lexical entry ever occurs via a phonological recoding of a visually-presented word. The phonological recoding procedure might be so slow that when the letter string presented is a word, access to its lexical entry via a visual representation is always achieved before phonological recoding is completed. If prelexical phonological recodings are produced by using grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules, such recodings can only occur for words which conform to these rules (regular words), since applications of the rules to words which do not conform to the rules (exception words) produce incorrect phonological representations. In two experiments, it was found that time to achieve lexical access (as measured by YES latency in a lexical decision task) was equivalent for regular words and exception words. It was concluded that access to lexical entries in lexical decision experiments of this sort does not proceed by sometimes or always phonologically recoding visually-presented words.

scholarly journals Effects of iconicity in lexical decision

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID M. SIDHU ◽  
GABRIELLA VIGLIOCCO ◽  
PENNY M. PEXMAN
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Letter String ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Semantic Features

abstractIn contrast to arbitrariness, a recent perspective is that words contain both arbitrary and iconic aspects. We investigated iconicity in word recognition, and the possibility that iconic words have special links between phonological and semantic features that may facilitate their processing. In Experiment 1, participants completed a lexical decision task (“Is this letter string a word?”) including words varying in their iconicity. Notably, we manipulated stimulus presentation conditions such that the items were visually degraded for half of the participants; this manipulation has been shown to increase reliance on phonology. Responses to words higher in iconicity were faster and more accurate, but this did not interact with condition. In Experiment 2 we explicitly directed participants’ attention to phonology by using a phonological lexical decision task (“Does this letter string sound like a word?”). Responses to words that were higher in iconicity were once again faster. These results demonstrate facilitatory effects of iconicity in lexical processing, thus showing that the benefits of iconic mappings extend beyond those reported for language learning and those argued for language evolution.

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