Phonemic feature involvement in lexical access in grades 3 and 5: Evidence from visual and auditory lexical decision tasks.

Numerous studies have evidenced the involvement of the phonological code during visual word recognition not only in skilled adult readers but also in child readers. Moreover, in skilled adult readers, visual word processing has been shown to be sensitive to phonetic details such as phonemic features (e.g., manner of articulation, place of articulation, voicing and nasality in French) which are typically involved in phonological lexicon access during speech processing. In contrast, it is not known whether and when visual word recognition is affected by phonemic features during learning to read. The present study investigates this issue in third and fifth graders. A lexical decision task was performed in visual and auditory modalities. Targets were French words (e.g., piano [piano]) and pseudowords created from target words. Mismatching was on the first phoneme. There were one-feature phoneme mismatch pseudowords (e.g., tiano) and multiple-feature phoneme mismatch pseudowords (e.g., liano). The pseudowords were used as a marker of the sensitivity to phonemic features in phonological lexicon access. Phonemic feature effects were found in visual and auditory lexical decision tasks in both grades, indicating that phonological lexicon access involves phonemic features in print processing as in speech processing. In contrast, the absence of difference between both grades seems to indicate that this effect is independent of age or, more precisely, of phonological development and reading performance.

Automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition in bilingual children: A cross-language masked priming study in grades 3 and 5.

Previous masked priming research has shown automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition in monolingual skilled adult readers. Activation also occurs across languages in bilingual adult readers, suggesting that the activation of phonological representations is not language specific. Less is known about developing readers. First, it is unclear whether there is automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition among children in general. Second, no empirical data exist on whether the activation of phonological representations is language specific or not in bilingual children. The current study investigated these issues in bilingual third and fifth graders using cross-language phonological masked priming in a lexical decision task. Targets were French words, and primes were English pseudowords of three types: (a) phonological primes, which share phonological information with the target beginning (e.g., dee-DIMANCHE [Sunday], pronounced /di:/-/dimãʃ/); (b) orthographic control primes, which control for letters shared by the phonological prime and target (e.g., d) and their position (e.g., doo-DIMANCHE, pronounced /du:/-/dimãʃ/); and (c) unrelated primes, which share no phonological or orthographic information with the target beginning (e.g., pow-DIMANCHE, pronounced /paʊ/-/dimãʃ/). Significant phonological priming was observed, suggesting that (a) phonological representations are rapidly and automatically activated by print during visual word recognition from Grade 3 onward and that (b) the activation of phonological representations is not language specific in bilingual children.

Co-occurrence frequency evaluated with large language corpora boosts semantic priming effects.

In recent decades, many computational techniques have been developed to analyse the contextual usage of words in large language corpora. The present study examined whether the co-occurrence frequency obtained from large language corpora might boost purely semantic priming effects. Two experiments were conducted: one with conscious semantic priming, the other with subliminal semantic priming. Both experiments contrasted three semantic priming contexts: an unrelated priming context and two related priming contexts with word pairs that are semantically related and that co-occur either frequently or infrequently. In the conscious priming presentation (166-ms stimulus-onset asynchrony, SOA), a semantic priming effect was recorded in both related priming contexts, which was greater with higher co-occurrence frequency. In the subliminal priming presentation (66-ms SOA), no significant priming effect was shown, regardless of the related priming context. These results show that co-occurrence frequency boosts pure semantic priming effects and are discussed with reference to models of semantic network.

Literacy Affects Spoken Language in a Non-Linguistic Task: An ERP Study.

It is now commonly accepted that orthographic information influences spoken word recognition in a variety of laboratory tasks (lexical decision, semantic categorization, gender decision). However, it remains a hotly debated issue whether or not orthography would influence normal word perception in passive listening. That is, the argument has been made that orthography might only be activated in laboratory tasks that require lexical or semantic access in some form or another. It is possible that these rather "unnatural" tasks invite participants to use orthographic information in a strategic way to improve task performance. To put the strategy account to rest, we conducted an event-related brain potential (ERP) study, in which participants were asked to detect a 500-ms-long noise burst that appeared on 25% of the trials (Go trials). In the NoGo trials, we presented spoken words that were orthographically consistent or inconsistent. Thus, lexical and/or semantic processing was not required in this task and there was no strategic benefit in computing orthography to perform this task. Nevertheless, despite the non-linguistic nature of the task, we replicated the consistency effect that has been previously reported in lexical decision and semantic tasks (i.e., inconsistent words produce more negative ERPs than consistent words as early as 300 ms after the onset of the spoken word). These results clearly suggest that orthography automatically influences word perception in normal listening even if there is no strategic benefit to do so. The results are explained in terms of orthographic restructuring of phonological representations.

Beyond rhyme or reason: ERPs reveal task-specific activation of orthography on spoken language.

Metaphonological tasks, such as rhyme judgment, have been the primary tool for the investigation of the effects of orthographic knowledge on spoken language. However, it has been recently argued that the orthography effect in rhyme judgment does not reflect the automatic activation of orthographic codes but rather stems from sophisticated response strategies. Such a claim stands in sharp contrast with recent findings using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in lexical and semantic tasks, which were taken to suggest that orthographic information occurs early enough to affect the core process of lexical access. Here, we show that the electrophysiological signature of the orthography effect in rhyme judgment is indeed different from the one obtained in online lexical or semantic tasks. That is, we did not find the orthography effect in the 300-350 ms time window which has previously been shown to process lexical information in the lexico-semantic tasks, but the effect appeared within the 175-250 ms and the 375-750 ms time-windows which we interpreted to reflect segmentation and decisional process, respectively. We conclude that the interactions between phonology and orthography are task-specific. Metaphonological tasks appear of limited use for studying the core processes and interactions that underlie lexical access.

When beef primes reef more than leaf: orthographic information affects phonological priming in spoken word recognition.

This study was designed to investigate orthographic effects on spoken word recognition by combining the priming paradigm with a measure of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Primes and targets either shared both orthography and phonology of the rhyme (beef-reef) or they shared rhyme phonology only (leaf-reef). The two "related" conditions were compared against an "unrelated" condition (sick-reef). The results revealed a significant orthographic priming effect that was present on the early part of the N400 and that occurred as early as the phonological priming effect itself. Importantly, phonological and orthographic priming effects had different topographic distributions: The phonological priming effect was localized over centro-posterior regions, whereas the orthographic priming effect was more anterior. These results support a theory according to which orthographic information is coactivated online in spoken word recognition.

Orthographic effects in spoken language: on-line activation or phonological restructuring?

Previous research has shown that literacy (i.e., learning to read and spell) affects spoken language processing. However, there is an on-going debate about the nature of this influence. Some argued that orthography is co-activated on-line whenever we hear a spoken word. Others suggested that orthography is not activated on-line but has changed the nature of the phonological representations. Finally, both effects might occur simultaneously, that is, orthography might be activated on-line in addition to having changed the nature of the phonological representations. Previous studies have not been able to tease apart these hypotheses. The present study started by replicating the finding of an orthographic consistency effect in spoken word recognition using event-related brain potentials (ERPs): words with multiple spellings (i.e., inconsistent words) differed from words with unique spellings (i.e., consistent words) as early as 330 ms after the onset of the target. We then employed standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) to determine the possible underlying cortical generators of this effect. The results showed that the orthographic consistency effect was clearly localized in a classic phonological area (left BA40). No evidence was found for activation in the posterior cortical areas coding orthographic information, such as the visual word form area in the left fusiform gyrus (BA37). This finding is consistent with the restructuring hypothesis according to which phonological representations are "contaminated" by orthographic knowledge.

On-line orthographic influences on spoken language in a semantic task.

Literacy changes the way the brain processes spoken language. Most psycholinguists believe that orthographic effects on spoken language are either strategic or restricted to meta-phonological tasks. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the locus and the time course of orthographic effects on spoken word recognition in a semantic task. Participants were asked to decide whether a given word belonged to a semantic category (body parts). On no-go trials, words were presented that were either orthographically consistent or inconsistent. Orthographic inconsistency (i.e., multiple spellings of the same phonology) could occur either in the first or the second syllable. The ERP data showed a clear orthographic consistency effect that preceded lexical access and semantic effects. Moreover, the onset of the orthographic consistency effect was time-locked to the arrival of the inconsistency in a spoken word, which suggests that orthography influences spoken language in a time-dependent manner. The present data join recent evidence from brain imaging showing orthographic activation in spoken language tasks. Our results extend those findings by showing that orthographic activation occurs early and affects spoken word recognition in a semantic task that does not require the explicit processing of orthographic or phonological structure.

On-line activation of orthography in spoken word recognition.

An increasing number of studies suggest that learning to read changes the way the brain processes spoken language. Yet, there is still a hot debate about the locus of these literacy effects. While most psycholinguists would argue that these effects are late and postlexical, interactive theories of word recognition suggest that orthography might affect the core processes of spoken word recognition (lexical access). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to track the on-line activation of orthography in spoken word recognition. We manipulated the orthographic consistency of spoken words at two positions: early or late. The results showed prelexical and lexical ERP differences between orthographically consistent and inconsistent words. Most importantly, the ERP differences were time-locked to the "arrival" of the orthographic inconsistency, which provides the strongest evidence available thus far in favor of on-line activation of orthography during spoken word recognition.

The role of orthography in speech production revisited.

The language production system of literate adults comprises an orthographic system (used during written language production) and a phonological system (used during spoken language production). Recent psycholinguistic research has investigated possible influences of the orthographic system on the phonological system. This research has produced contrastive results, with some studies showing effects of orthography in the course of normal speech production while others failing to show such effects. In this article, we review the available evidence and consider possible explanations for the discrepancy. We then report two form-preparation experiments which aimed at testing for the effects of orthography in spoken word-production. Our results provide clear evidence that the orthographic properties of the words do not influence their spoken production in picture naming. We discuss this finding in relation to psycholinguistic and neuropsychological investigations of the relationship between written and spoken word-production.