Mathilde Muneaux

Neighborhood effects in auditory word recognition: Phonological competition and orthographic facilitation

The present study investigated phonological and orthographic neighborhood effects in auditory word recognition in French. In an auditory lexical decision task, phonological neighborhood (PN) produced the standard inhibitory effect (words with many neighbors produced longer latencies and more errors than words with few neighbors). In contrast, orthographic neighborhood (ON) produced a facilitatory effect. In Experiment 2, the facilitatory ON effect was replicated while controlling for phonotactic probability, a variable that has previously been shown to produce facilitatory effects. In Experiment 3, the results were replicated in a shadowing task, ruling out the possibility that the ON effect results from a strategic and task-specific mechanism that might operate in the lexical decision task. It is argued that the PN effect reflects lexical competition between similar sounding words while the ON effect reflects the consistency of the sublexical mapping between phonology and orthography. The results join an accumulating number of studies suggesting that orthographic information influences auditory word recognition.

Effects of phonological and orthographic neighbourhood density interact in visual word recognition.

The present study investigated the role of phonological and orthographic neighbourhood density in visual word recognition. Three mechanisms were identified that predict distinct facilitatory or inhibitory effects of each variable. The lexical competition account predicts overall inhibitory effects of neighbourhood density. The global activation (familiarity) account predicts overall facilitatory effects of neighbourhood density. Finally, the cross-code consistency account predicts an interaction, with inhibition of phonological neighbours in sparse orthographic regions and facilitation of phonological neighbours in dense orthographic regions. In Experiment 1 (lexical decision), a cross-over interaction was indeed found, supporting the prediction of the cross-code consistency account. In Experiment 2, this cross-over interaction was exaggerated by adding pseudohomo-phone stimuli (e.g., brane) among the nonword targets. Finally, in Experiment 3 (progressive demasking), we tried to shift the balance between inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms by using a perceptual identification task. As predicted, the inhibitory effects of phonological neighbourhood were amplified, whereas the facilitatory effects disappeared. We conclude that the level of compatibility across co-activated orthographic and phonological representations is a major causal factor underlying this pattern of effects.

Orthographic facilitation and phonological inhibition in spoken word recognition: A developmental study

We investigated the extent to which learning to read and write affects spoken word recognition. Previous studies have reported orthographic effects on spoken language in skilled readers. However, very few studies have addressed the development of these effects as a function of reading expertise. We therefore studied orthographic neighborhood (ON) and phonological neighborhood (PN) effects in spoken word recognition in beginning and advanced readers and in children with developmental dyslexia. We predicted that whereas both beginning and advanced readers would show normal PN effects, only advanced readers would show ON effects. The results confirmed these predictions. The size of the ON effect on spoken word recognition was strongly predicted by written language experience and proficiency. In contrast, the size of the PN effect was not affected by reading level. Moreover, dyslexic readers showed no orthographic effects on spoken word recognition. In sum, these data suggest that orthographic effects on spoken word recognition are not artifacts of some uncontrolled spoken language property but reflect a genuine influence of orthographic information on spoken word recognition.

Locus of orthographic effects in spoken word recognition: Novel insights from the neighbour generation task

Previous research has found that orthographic information can influence auditory word recognition. However, there is still debate about the locus of this effect (lexical versus nonlexical, strategic versus automatic). In the present study, we explored whether orthographic effects in auditory word recognition could be structural-residual effects that reflect changes in the quality or specificity of phonological representations during learning to read. To address this possibility, the neighbour generation task was used. This task is particularly well suited to explore the off-line nature of phonological representations. Indeed, in two experiments, we found that orthographic information affected the nature of phonological representations. Participants produced phonographic neighbours (i.e., words that share both orthographic and phonological neighbourhoods) significantly more often than would be expected by chance. The existence of an orthography effect in an off-line phonological task therefore suggests that orthographic information participates in the specification of phonological representations.