Visual Word Processing

A “Triangle Model” of Chinese Reading Jianfeng Yang (goldswordy@gmail.com) State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, China Jason D Zevin (jdz2001@med.cornell.edu) Sackler Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College, USA ...

This chapter briefly describes the nature of the Spanish language as a linguistic type and discusses the difficulties
that readers face concerning the way phonologic, morphologic, and orthographic units are aligned
and recognized in reading. Particular attention is paid to the syllable-based decomposition of Spanish
words. Contrary to most cross-linguistic studies that underestimate the complexity of Spanish orthography
on ignoring the role of suprasegmental units in reading, evidence is reviewed that shows that actual
performance depends on the materials readers are actually given. Regardless, observations of low performance
in reading-comprehension tests, popular assessment scales, and studies that showhigh performance
for Spanish readers keep using nonrepresentative reading material and lexical candidates for which no
conflicting word-recognition processes emerge. Thus old prejudices about the shallow nature of Spanish
orthography are confirmed in most studies. The role of bottom-up and top-down processes in lexical selection
is discussed to account for theway that competing lexical entries become active in multiword displays

Dos concepciones teóricas tratan de explicar qué mecanismos operan en el reconocimiento de palabras.
En los modelos duales, el acceso a una representación léxica depende de dos mecanismos: 1) Recodificación
fonológica, que permite ensamblar una imagen acústica unitaria del patrón visual a partir de unidades
segmentales de habla; y 2) Recuperación fonológica, que permite obtener una representación unitaria del patrón
de estímulo a partir de relaciones asociativas que se establecen entre un patrón de estímulo y entradas léxicas
orales ya disponibles. Si el mecanismo de recodificación se propone para explicar cómo se genera la
pronunciación de un patrón de estímulo para la que no existe o no se conoce una entrada léxica, el mecanismo de
recuperación se basa en la existencia de entradas léxicas que se asocian a patrones de estímulo y se propone para
explicar el proceso de reconocimiento de patrones que no se ajustan a reglas de conversión (cf. Sainz, 2005).

Experimental and quantitative research in the field of human language processing and production strongly depends on the quality of the underlying language material: beside its size, representativeness, variety and balance have been discussed as important factors which influence design, analysis and interpretation of experiments and their results. This volume brings together creators and users of both general purpose and specialized lexical resources which are used in psychology, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and cognitive research. It aims to be a forum to report experiences and results, review problems and discuss perspectives of any linguistic data used in the field.

Abstract Converging evidence from behavioral masked priming (Rastle & Davis, 2008), EEG masked priming (Morris, Frank, Grainger, & Holcomb, 2007) and single word MEG (Zweig & Pylkkänen, 2008) experiments has provided robust support for a model of lexical processing which includes an early, automatic, visual word form based stage of morphological parsing that applies to all derivationally affixed words.

Although identical on the spoken level, Hindi and Urdu differ markedly on the written level in terms of reading/writing direction and orthographic depth, with discernible processing consequences. The present study used a divided field paradigm to study the impact of writing system characteristics of Hindi and Urdu on word naming latencies in skilled biliterate users of these languages. Hindi (read/written from left to right) was hypothesized to show a larger right field advantage than Urdu (read/written from right to left); Hindi words sharing form overlap with primes were expected to show a significant priming effect in the left visual field, but a significant right field effect for morphologically-primed naming. Both these expectations were confirmed. An overall right field advantage was obtained for one syllable Hindi and Urdu words; two syllable Urdu words showed either no visual field differences or a left field advantage, and the right field advantage for Hindi was significantly greater for two syllable than one syllable words. Further, Hindi words showed significant form priming (relative to control stimuli) in the left visual field and significant morphological priming (relative to form priming) in the right visual field. By contrast, Urdu words showed no significant form priming in either visual field, and significantly greater morphological than form priming in the left visual field. These results are taken to suggest that visual field asymmetries in word naming are sensitive to differences in reading habit-related scanning biases and to orthographic depth-related differences in word recognition processes.

tEarly life events can exert a powerful influence on both the pattern of brain architecture and behavioral development. The paper examines the nature of nervous system plasticity, the nature of functional con-nectivities in the nervous system, and the application of connectography to better understand the conceptof a functional neurology that can shed light on approaches to instruction in preschool and primary edu-cation. The paper also examines the genetic underpinnings of brain development such as synaptogenesis, plasticity, and critical periods as they relate to numerosity, language and perceptual development. Dis-cussed is how the child’s environment in school and home interact with and modify the structures and functions of the developing brain. The role of experience for the child is to both maintain and expand the child’s early wiring diagram necessary for effective cognitive as well as neurological development beyond early childhood.

The goal of this research is to provide directors and editors of periodicals with a theoretically and experimentally valid scheme toward understanding the influence of visual composition as applied to reader selection, processing and memory retention of specific items on digital Portuguese newspaper pages, published on the World Wide Web. This project will study the various theoretical concepts related to this subject - visual composition, visual behaviour patterns in readers of electronic newspapers, and use Eye Tracking technology as a tool for optimising visual composition for efficiency in the transmission of content. That is, use of the Eye Tracker device will permit a highly accurate rendering of the relative importance of each element in a page layout, and readers visual interactions. Furthermore, with a view to establishing a parallel between a reader’s attention, information processing and retention of perceived elements, a cognitive evaluation test of the effect of the navigation experience will be done with each reader.
Despite the daily use of electronic newspapers by the general public, we found a widespread ignorance on the part of the users about the visual composition and its importance to an optimal decoding of the messages published in newspapers. In Portugal, the lack of literature on the subject is a valid argument justifying the need for scientific studies to overcome public ignorance of both the academic scholars and the managers and editors of publications. On this basis, the main goal of this research is to determine the potential of visual composition as a vehicle for organizing the process of interaction between the user and the product. In this sense, we want, at first, to observe the pathways and the visual fixations of users of a set of general Portuguese electronic newspapers, in order to determine the patterns of visual appropriation and information processing of users. And, secondly, we want to, carry out an experimental investigation with the aim of checking if the strategies for organizing the graphic elements in the space of observation present different levels of attention and information processing.

Even single words in isolation can evoke emotional reactions, but the mechanisms by which emotion is involved in automatic lexical processing are unclear. Previous studies using extremely similar materials and methods have yielded apparently incompatible patterns of results. In much previous work, however, words' emotional content is entangled with other non-emotional characteristics such as frequency of occurrence, familiarity and age of acquisition, all of which have potential consequences for lexical processing themselves. In the present study, the authors compare different models of emotion using the British Lexicon Project, a large-scale freely available lexical decision database. After controlling for the potentially confounding effects of non-emotional variables, a variety of statistical approaches revealed that emotional words, whether positive or negative, are processed faster than neutral words. This effect appears to be categorical rather than graded; is not modulated by emotional arousal; and is not limited to words explicitly referring to emotions. The authors suggest that emotional connotations facilitate processing due to the grounding of words' meanings in emotional experience.

on Italian, which consider truly suffixed words with respect to words with
non-morphological endings (it. inquina-mento ‘pollution’–cemento ‘cement’) and we
focused on series which display different degrees of internal consistency. Crucially,
in order to facilitate the emergence of the series effect, we used a semantic categorization
task associated with the masked priming technique, instead of the traditional
lexical decision (LDT). Our results show that when the masked priming effects are
not inhibited by formal factors (as happens with LDT), the facilitation induced by
the words organization in series emerges more easily, although it is affected by series
consistency in different ways. Firstly, while the series effect approaches significance
for consistent series, it fails to emerge for non-consistent ones (Exp. 1). Secondly, the
base effect is more robust and clear-cut in consistent than in non-consistent series.
Thirdly, in more consistent series the interference of formal/orthographic factors is
absent or reduced, while it significantly affects processing in less consistent series
(Exp. 2). All in all, our results demonstrate that the paradigmatic effects are inherently
graded as they crucially depend on series internal consistency and that they
crucially interact with family effects during word access.

Studies in bilingualism have shown that words activate form-similar neighbors in both first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Accordingly, we hypothesized that the degree of form similarity between L1–L2 word pairs causes a proportional amount of prosodic transfer in L2 speech production. Thus, cognate pairs L1–L2 which bear lexical stress in the same syllable position should be facilitated in L2 production, while cognates with stress on mismatching positions L1–L2 should be inhibited. The results of a speeded word naming task with English L2 speakers showed facilitation in production of cognate words overall. Concerning word stress in L1–L2, an opposite effect was found between 2- and 3-syllable cognate words, while no effect was found for non-cognates. The effects found for cognate words correlate with form similarity and L2 lexical frequency values, corroborating the hypotheses that lexical activation in L2 is non-selective and that the bilingual lexicon is built in association bet...

The decisions which lead to the identification of a word entry
are the result of a forced selection process, which assigns as
default the entry which best matches the available cues. This
probabilistic approach means that the lexical selection of an
entry depends on features which distinguish it from any other
lexical entries competing for selection (Ziegler, & als, 2003)
subject to attention, lexical activation and task demands.