Ram Frost

Toward a strong phonological theory of visual word recognition: true issues and false trails.

A strong phonological theory of reading is proposed and discussed. The first claim of this article is that current debates on word recognition are often based on different axioms regarding the cognitive structures of the mental lexicon rather than conflicting empirical evidence. These axioms lead to different interpretations of the same data. It is argued that once the implicit axioms of competing theories in visual word recognition are explicated, a strong phonological model presents a viable and coherent approach. The assumptions underlying a strong phonological theory of reading are outlined, and 4 theoretical questions are examined: Is phonological recoding a mandatory phase of print processing? Is phonology necessary for lexical access? Is phonology necessary for accessing meaning? How can phonology be derived from orthographic structure? These issues are integrated into a general theory that is constrained by all of the findings.

Strategies for Visual Word Recognition and Orthographical Depth: A Multilingual Comparison

We investigated the psychological reality ofthe concept of orthographical depth and its influence on visual word recognition by examining naming performance in Hebrew, English, and Serbo-Croatian. We ran three sr of experiments in which we used native speakers and identical experimental methods in each language. Experiment 1 revealed that the lexical status ofthe stimulus (high-frequency words, low-frequency words, and nonwords) significantly affected naming in Hebrew (the deepest of the three orthographies). This effect was only moderate in English and nonsignificant in SerboCroatian (the shallowest of the three orthographies). Moreover, only in Hebrew did lexical status have similar effects on naming and lexical decision performance. Experiment 2 revealed that semantic priming effects in naming were larger in Hebrew than in English and completely absent in SerboCroatian. Experiment 3 revealed that a large proportion of nonlexical tokens (nonwords) in the stimulus list affects naming words in Hebrew and in English, but not in Serbo-Croatian. These resuits were interpreted as strong support for the orthographical depth hypothesis and suggest, in general, that in shallow orthographies phonology is generated dirr from print, whereas in deep orthographies phonology is derived from the internal lexicon.

Chapter 4 The Reading Process is Different for Different Orthographies: The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses that the varying dependence on the alphabetic principle may mean for the mental processes involved in reading and writing. Within the group of alphabetic orthographies itself, there are varying degrees of dependence on the strict alphabetic principle: the range of correspondence between grapheme and phoneme varies both in consistency and completeness. The degree of this dependence is to some extent a function of a languages characteristic phonology and morphology, just as was the choice of the kind of orthography itself. Even among the various alphabetic writing systems themselves, there are major differences in the degree to which they mirror the phonemic structure of their respective spoken languages. The reason for the differences is largely accounted for by the particular phonological and morphological characteristics of each language. For example, standard written Hebrew is an orthography in which all diacritics (or points) are omitted. These diacritics represent nearly all of the vowels and are also used to disambiguate some of the consonants.

What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation.

All Hebrew words are composed of 2 interwoven morphemes: a triconsonantal root and a phonological word pattern. the lexical representations of these morphemic units were examined using masked priming. When primes and targets shared an identical word pattern, neither lexical decision nor naming of targets was facilitated. In contrast root primes facilitated both lexical decisions and naming of target words that were derived from these roots. This priming effect proved to be independent of meaning similarity because no priming effects were found when primes and targets were semantically but not morphologically related. These results suggest that Hebrew roots are lexical units whereas word patterns are not. A working model of lexical organization in Hebrew is offered on the basis of these results.

Translation priming with different scripts : Masked priming with cognates and noncognates in Hebrew-English bilinguals

Hebrew-English cognates (translations similar in meaning and form) and noncognates (translations similar in meaning only) were examined in masked translation priming. Enhanced priming for cognates was found with L1 (dominant language) primes, but unlike previous results, it was not found with L2 (nondominant language) primes. Priming was also obtained for noncognates, whereas previous studies showed unstable effects for such stimuli. The authors interpret the results in a dual-lexicon model by suggesting that (a) both orthographic and phonological overlap are needed to establish shared lexical entries for cognates (and hence also symmetric cognate priming), and (b) script differences facilitate rapid access by providing a cue to the lexical processor that directs access to the proper lexicon, thus producing stable noncognate priming. The asymmetrical cognate effect obtained with different scripts may be attributed to an overreliance on phonology in L2 reading.

Towards a Universal Model of Reading

In the last decade, reading research has seen a paradigmatic shift. A new wave of computational models of orthographic processing that offer various forms of noisy position or context-sensitive coding have revolutionized the field of visual word recognition. The influx of such models stems mainly from consistent findings, coming mostly from European languages, regarding an apparent insensitivity of skilled readers to letter order. Underlying the current revolution is the theoretical assumption that the insensitivity of readers to letter order reflects the special way in which the human brain encodes the position of letters in printed words. The present article discusses the theoretical shortcomings and misconceptions of this approach to visual word recognition. A systematic review of data obtained from a variety of languages demonstrates that letter-order insensitivity is neither a general property of the cognitive system nor a property of the brain in encoding letters. Rather, it is a variant and idiosyncratic characteristic of some languages, mostly European, reflecting a strategy of optimizing encoding resources, given the specific structure of words. Since the main goal of reading research is to develop theories that describe the fundamental and invariant phenomena of reading across orthographies, an alternative approach to model visual word recognition is offered. The dimensions of a possible universal model of reading, which outlines the common cognitive operations involved in orthographic processing in all writing systems, are discussed.

Prelexical and postlexical strategies in reading: evidence from a deep and a shallow orthography.

The validity of the orthographic depth hypothesis (ODH) was examined in Hebrew by employing pointed (shallow) and unpointed (deep) print. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed larger frequency effects and larger semantic priming effects in naming with unpointed print than with pointed print. In Experiments 3 and 4, subjects were presented with Hebrew consonantal strings that were followed by vowel marks appearing at stimulus onset asynchronies ranging from 0 ms (simultaneous presentation) to 300 ms from the onset of consonant presentation. Subjects were inclined to wait for the vowel marks to appear even though the words could be named unequivocally using lexical phonology. These results suggested that prelexical phonology was the default strategy for readers in shallow orthographies, providing strong support for the ODH.

Domain generality versus modality specificity: the paradox of statistical learning

Statistical learning (SL) is typically considered to be a domain-general mechanism by which cognitive systems discover the underlying distributional properties of the input. However, recent studies examining whether there are commonalities in the learning of distributional information across different domains or modalities consistently reveal modality and stimulus specificity. Therefore, important questions are how and why a hypothesized domain-general learning mechanism systematically produces such effects. Here, we offer a theoretical framework according to which SL is not a unitary mechanism, but a set of domain-general computational principles that operate in different modalities and, therefore, are subject to the specific constraints characteristic of their respective brain regions. This framework offers testable predictions and we discuss its computational and neurobiological plausibility.

Morphological priming: Dissociation of phonological, semantic, and morphological factors

Previous experiments based on a masked-priming paradigm revealed robust morphological priming effects induced by two derivational morphemes in Hebrew: the root and the verbal pattern. However, considering the special characteristics of the masked-priming paradigm, the possible contributions of phonological and/or semantic factors to these morphological effects could not be firmly assessed. In the present study, the role of these factors in morphological priming was examined, using cross-modal presentation. Experiment 1 revealed that priming between morphologically related words in Hebrew is determined by higher level linguistic characteristics and cannot be reduced to phonological overlap. Experiment 2 confirmed that morphological priming occurs in Hebrew even when primes and targets are not semantically related but, nevertheless, increases with semantic similarity. The results support the claim that morphological priming cannot be accounted for by considering semantic and phonological factors alone, and they exemplify the potential of using both masked and cross-modal priming to examine morphological processing.

The what, when, where, and how of visual word recognition

A long-standing debate in reading research is whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner on the basis of orthographic information, with other representations such as semantics and phonology activated subsequently, or whether the system is fully interactive and feedback from these representations shapes early visual word recognition. We review recent evidence from behavioral, functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, and biologically plausible connectionist modeling approaches, focusing on how each approach provides insight into the temporal flow of information in the lexical system. We conclude that, consistent with interactive accounts, higher-order linguistic representations modulate early orthographic processing. We also discuss how biologically plausible interactive frameworks and coordinated empirical and computational work can advance theories of visual word recognition and other domains (e.g., object recognition).