Joana Acha

The effects of length and transposed-letter similarity in lexical decision: Evidence with beginning, intermediate, and adult readers

Do length and transposed-letter effects reflect developmental changes on reading acquisition in a transparent orthography? Can computational models of visual word recognition accommodate these changes? To answer these questions, we carried out a masked priming lexical decision experiment with Spanish beginning, intermediate, and adult readers (N=36, 44, and 39; average age: 7, 11, and 22 years, respectively). Target words were either short or long (6.5 vs. 8.5 letters), and transposed-letter primes were formed by the transposition of two letters (e.g. aminal-ANIMAL) or by the substitution of two letters (orthographic control: arisal-ANIMAL). Children showed a robust length effect (i.e. long words were read slower than short words) that vanished in adults. In addition, both children and young adults showed a transposed-letter priming effect relative to the control condition. A robust transposed-letter priming effect was also observed in non-word reading, which strongly suggests that this effect occurs at an early prelexical level. Taken together, the results reveal that children evolve from a letter-by-letter reading to a direct lexical access and that the lexical decision task successfully captures the changing strategies used by beginning, intermediate, and adult readers. We examine the implications of these findings for the recent models of visual word recognition.

Space information is important for reading.

Reading a text without spaces in an alphabetic language causes disruption at the levels of word identification and eye movement control. In the present experiment, we examined how word discriminability affects the pattern of eye movements when reading unspaced text in an alphabetic language. More specifically, we designed an experiment in which participants read three types of sentences: normally written sentences, regular unspaced sentences, and alternatingbold unspaced sentences. Although there was a reading cost in the unspaced sentences relative to the normally written sentences, this cost was much smaller in alternatingbold unspaced sentences than in regular unspaced sentences.

Does letter position coding depend on consonant/vowel status? Evidence with the masked priming technique

Recently, a number of input coding schemes (e.g., SOLAR model, SERIOL model, open-bigram model, overlap model) have been proposed that capture the transposed-letter priming effect (i.e., faster response times for jugde-JUDGE than for jupte-JUDGE). In their current version, these coding schemes do not assume any processing differences between vowels and consonants. However, in a lexical decision task, Perea and Lupker (2004, JML; Lupker, Perea, & Davis, 2008, L&CP) reported that transposed-letter priming effects occurred for consonant transpositions but not for vowel transpositions. This finding poses a challenge for these recently proposed coding schemes. Here, we report four masked priming experiments that examine whether this consonant/vowel dissociation in transposed-letter priming is task-specific. In Experiment 1, we used a lexical decision task and found a transposed-letter priming effect only for consonant transpositions. In Experiments 2-4, we employed a same-different task - a task which taps early perceptual processes - and found a robust transposed-letter priming effect that did not interact with consonant/vowel status. We examine the implications of these findings for the front-end of the models of visual word recognition.

The Effect of Neighborhood Frequency in Reading: Evidence with Transposed-Letter Neighbors.

Transposed-letter effects (e.g., jugde activates judge) pose serious models for models of visual-word recognition that use position-specific coding schemes. However, even though the evidence of transposed-letter effects with nonword stimuli is strong, the evidence for word stimuli is scarce and inconclusive. The present experiment examined the effect of neighborhood frequency during normal silent reading using transposed-letter neighbors (e.g., silver, sliver). Two sets of low-frequency words were created (equated in the number of substitution neighbors, word frequency, and number of letters), which were embedded in sentences. In one set, the target word had a higher frequency transposed-letter neighbor, and in the other set, the target word had no transposed-letter neighbors. An inhibitory effect of neighborhood frequency was observed in measures that reflect late processing in words (number of regressions back to the target word, and total time). We examine the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition and reading.

Eye movements when reading text messaging (txt msgng)

The growing popularity of mobile-phone technology has led to changes in the way people—particularly younger people—communicate. A clear example of this is the advent of Short Message Service (SMS) language, which includes orthographic abbreviations (e.g., omitting vowels, as in wk, week) and phonetic respelling (e.g., using u instead of you). In the present study, we examined the pattern of eye movements during reading of SMS sentences (e.g., my hols wr gr8), relative to normally written sentences, in a sample of skilled “texters”. SMS sentences were created by using (mostly) orthographic or phonological abbreviations. Results showed that there is a reading cost—both at a local level and at a global level—for individuals who are highly expert in SMS language. Furthermore, phonological abbreviations resulted in a greater cost than orthographic abbreviations.

Lexical competition is enhanced in the left hemisphere: Evidence from different types of orthographic neighbors

Two divided visual field lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the role of the cerebral hemispheres in orthographic neighborhood effects. In Experiment 1, we employed two types of words: words with many substitution neighbors (high-N) and words with few substitution neighbors (low-N). Results showed a facilitative effect of N in the left visual field (i.e., right hemisphere) and an inhibitory effect of N in the right visual field (left hemisphere). In Experiment 2, we examined whether the inhibitory effect of the higher frequency neighbors increases in the left hemisphere as compared to the right hemisphere. To go beyond the usual N-metrics, we selected words with (or without) higher frequency neighbors (addition, deletion, or transposition neighbors). Results showed that the inhibitory effect of neighborhood frequency is enhanced in the right visual field. We examine the implications of these findings for the orthographic coding schemes employed by the models of visual word recognition.

Cross-linguistic interactions influence reading development in bilinguals: a comparison between early balanced French-Basque and Spanish-Basque bilingual children

This study investigates whether orthographic consistency and transparency of languages have an impact on the development of reading strategies and reading sub-skills (i.e. phonemic awareness and visual attention span) in bilingual children. We evaluated 21 French (opaque)-Basque (transparent) bilingual children and 21 Spanish (transparent)-Basque (transparent) bilingual children at Grade 2, and 16 additional children of each group at Grade 5. All of them were assessed in their common language (i.e. Basque) on tasks measuring word and pseudoword reading, phonemic awareness and visual attention span skills. The Spanish speaking groups showed better Basque pseudoword reading and better phonemic awareness abilities than their French speaking peers, but only in the most difficult conditions of the tasks. However, on the visual attention span task, the French-Basque bilinguals showed the most efficient visual processing strategies to perform the task. Therefore, learning to read in an additional language affected differently Basque literacy skills, depending on whether this additional orthography was opaque (e.g. French) or transparent (e.g. Spanish). Moreover, we showed that the most noteworthy effects of Spanish and French orthographic transparency on Basque performance were related to the size of the phonological and visual grain used to perform the tasks.

Normative study of the implicit causality of 100 interpersonal verbs in Spanish.

This study provides normative data on the implicit causality of interpersonal verbs in Spanish. Two experiments were carried out. In Experiment 1, ratings of the implicit causality of 100 verbs classified into four types (agent-patient, agent-evocator, stimulus-experiencer, and experiencer-stimulus) were examined. An offline task was used in which 105 adults and 163 children had to complete sentences containing one verb. Both age and gender effects in the causal biases were examined. In Experiment 2, reading times for sentences containing 60 verbs were analyzed. An online reading task was used in which 34 adults had to read sentences that were both congruent and incongruent with the implicit causality of the verb. The results support the effect of implicit causality in both adults and children, and they support the taxonomy used.

On the role of consonants and vowels in visual-word processing: Evidence with a letter search paradigm

Prior research has shown that the search function in the visual letter search task may reflect the regularities of the orthographic structure of a given script. In the present experiment, we examined whether the search function of letter detection was sensitive to consonant-vowel status of a pre-cued letter. Participants had to detect the presence/absence of a previously cued letter target (either vowel or consonant) at the initial, central or final position in a five-letter Spanish word or pseudoword. Results showed a significant effect of consonant-vowel status on letter search function which paralleled the orthographic constraints of Spanish. When searching for a consonant, participants showed faster identification of the initial position compared to the central and last positions. The opposite pattern was found for vowels. This result suggests a differential contribution of consonants and vowels to the identification of the orthographic structure of words, in terms of their relative position in Spanish words.

Does Kaniso Activate CASINO? Input Coding Schemes and Phonology in Visual-Word Recognition

Most recent input coding schemes in visual-word recognition assume that letter position coding is orthographic rather than phonological in nature (e.g., SOLAR, open-bigram, SERIOL, and overlap). This assumption has been drawn - in part - by the fact that the transposed-letter effect (e.g., caniso activates CASINO) seems to be (mostly) insensitive to phonological manipulations (e.g., Perea & Carreiras, 2006, 2008; Perea & Pérez, 2009). However, one could argue that the lack of a phonological effect in prior research was due to the fact that the manipulation always occurred in internal letter positions - note that phonological effects tend to be stronger for the initial syllable (Carreiras, Ferrand, Grainger, & Perea, 2005). To reexamine this issue, we conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment in which we compared the priming effect for transposed-letter pairs (e.g., caniso-CASINO vs. caviro-CASINO) and for pseudohomophone transposed-letter pairs (kaniso-CASINO vs. kaviro-CASINO). Results showed a transposed-letter priming effect for the correctly spelled pairs, but not for the pseudohomophone pairs. This is consistent with the view that letter position coding is (primarily) orthographic in nature.