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According to UNESCO. 2020. World atlas of languages, 3rd edn. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Available at: https://en.wal.unesco.org, the Tongan language is classified as ‘potentially vulnerable.’ This study aimed to identify a core Tongan vocabulary and develop a web-searchable database to support the preservation and accessibility of the language. Due to the lack of a large-scale corpus for calculating lexical frequencies, we utilized vocabulary from the Students’ English-Tongan and Tongan-English Dictionary (Thompson, Richard H. & ‘Ofa Thompson. 1992. The students’ English-Tongan and Tongan-English dictionary. Tonga: Faletohi ‘Otumotu Angl’ofa’), a resource commonly used in Tongan schools. This dictionary compiles words used in both Tongan and English in everyday life. By examining processing speed and accuracy rates in lexical decision tasks, we identified a core Tongan vocabulary. Lexical decision tasks conducted on 4,013 words from the dictionary demonstrated a mean accuracy of 95.40 % and a rapid mean reaction time of 575 ms. A comparative analysis with an equal number of high-frequency words in English (Balota, David A., Melvin J. Yap, Michael J. Cortese, Keith A. Hutchison, Brett Kessler, Bjorn Loftis, James H. Neely, Douglas L. Nelson, Greg B. Simpson & Rebecca Treiman. 2007. The English lexicon project. Behavior Research Methods 39. 445–459) and French (Ferrand, Ludovic, Boris New, Marc Brysbaert, Emmanuel Keuleers, Patrick Bonin, Alain Méot, Maria Augustinova & Christophe Pallier. 2010. The French Lexicon Project: Lexical decision data for 38,840 French words and 38,840 pseudowords. Behavior Research Methods 42. 488–496) revealed that Tongan words were processed more quickly, though with an average accuracy approximately 2 % lower than the English and French words. Despite this slight difference in accuracy, the overall comprehension level for Tongan words remained high, with accuracy exceeding 95 %. Given the faster processing speeds observed, we propose that these words represent a core vocabulary in Tongan. To facilitate access to this vocabulary, we developed a web-based search engine (https://tonganlex.vercel.app/), which provides detailed information on letter (grapheme) count, phonemes, moras, parts of speech, meanings, as well as lexical decision times and accuracies. This study contributes to the accessibility of the Tongan language by making essential lexical information readily available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The syllable frequency effect refers to that during the lexical decision task, words beginning with high-frequency syllables elicit slower responses than words beginning with low-frequency ones, indicating an inhibitory effect. However, previous studies in Korean have yielded mixed results. For morphologically simple words, an inhibitory or null effect has been observed, whereas in morphologically complex words, a facilitative effect has been reported. Unfortunately, the explanations for these mixed findings remain unclear. This study employed both behavioral and electrophysiological methods to investigate the temporal dynamics of the facilitative syllable frequency effect in Korean morphologically complex nouns. A secondary aim was to explore whether syllable frequency is modulated by stem length as a factor in morphological processing, at both the behavioral and neurophysiological levels. Methods: Twenty-eight participants (mean age = 25.14, 9 female) performed a lexical decision task, responding whether visually presented stimuli were valid Korean words, while EEG data were recorded. The experimental condition included syllable frequency (2: High vs. low) and stem length (2: Long vs. Short). Results: The behavioral data showed that lexical decision latencies were faster for morphologically complex nouns with higher syllable frequencies compared to those with lower frequencies. The ERP data revealed a significant syllable frequency effect on the P300 component, reflecting early visual word processing. However, no significant effect was found in the N400 component. Although stem length did not significantly influence behavioral results, it did show significant differences in N250 amplitudes. Notably, an interaction between syllable frequency and stem length had a significant effect on N400, in contrast to the behavioral findings. Discussions: The findings suggest that, in the processing of morphologically complex words in Korean, syllable frequency serves as partial information that facilitates lexical decisions through the fast-guess mechanism, as proposed by the MROM-S model. Furthermore, the delayed time window for syllable processing may stemmed from a different stage of the processing between morphologically complex words and morphologically simple words. Lastly, stem length, as a form of morphological processing, may interact with syllable frequency during the lexical access stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Priming effects for morphological roots support theories that grant them a unique representational status in visual word recognition. However, effects for other morphemes, including inflectional affixes, have been inconsistent. In a large-N experiment, we test the reliability of inflectional affix priming and add a meta-analysis to quantify priming effect size for roots and affixes. Study 1 probes priming for the English past tense suffix –ed at short (34 ms) and long (150 ms) stimulus-onset asynchrony; pure morphological priming is not obtained that is statistically distinguishable from form-based priming effects. A Bayesian meta-analysis (Study 2) demonstrates priming for roots and prefixes, but not suffixes, that are statistically larger than form-based priming effects. Taken together the absence of suffix priming contrasts with robust root and prefix effects, which may reflect the left-to-right nature of visual word recognition in the languages studied in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The encoding of letter position appears to be relatively flexible. Transposed-letter pseudowords (e.g. CHOLOCATE) are more often misidentified as their base words (CHOCOLATE) compared to replacement-letter pseudowords (CHOTONATE) – transposed-letter effect. One plausible explanation for this effect is that it arises from visuospatial position uncertainty in letter position encoding. To test this account, we conducted two lexical decision experiments. Pseudowords were presented syllable-by-syllable in vertical and zigzag formats, making the position of the critical transposed or replaced letters more noticeable. In Experiment 1, we found a transposed-letter effect in both formats, which was sizeable in the error rates. Experiment 2 introduced a delayed 900-ms response cue to assess whether the transposed-letter effect fully vanishes in the absence of immediate time pressure. Results again showed a transposed-letter effect. Thus, while visuospatial uncertainty contributes to letter position flexibility during word recognition, an additional non-visual component is necessary to fully explain this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual processing of morphologically complex words has been studied for decades now. One influential account proposes initial sublexical parsing, based on surface structure, before semantic information comes in (form-first models; Rastle & Davis, 2008, Morphological decomposition based on the analysis of orthography. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23(7-8), 942–971. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960802069730). We tested this account in German, a morphologically rich language in a masked-priming lexical decision study with (pseudo-)derived German words. Behavioural data showed masked priming for truly morphologically complex (e.g. farmer – FARM), but not for pseudo-complex (e.g. corner – CORN) or merely form-related primes (e.g. cartel – CAR). MEG data revealed an early sensitivity to form (140–330 ms), followed by a differentiation between derived and other primes (260–480 ms), challenging the notion of early blind decomposition. The results align with the AUSTRAL model (Taft, 2023, Localist lexical representation of polymorphemic words. In D. Crepaldi (Ed.), Linguistic morphology in the mind and brain (1st ed., pp. 152–166). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003159759-11) and suggest that German speakers have heightened sensitivity to morpho-semantic information, unlike English speakers, which likely due to differences in morphological complexity between languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emojis are frequently used in digital communication to supplement the lack of non-verbal cues, but their integration during reading has not been thoroughly examined. This study explores the interplay between language and emotion by testing the influence of emotional valence and face-status of emojis on visual word recognition. Two online experiments were conducted with 92 native English-speaking university students, examining priming effects between congruent (e.g. delicious) and incongruent (e.g. hate) prime-target pairs, varying the face-status of the emoji prime (face vs. non-face) and the valence (positive vs. negative) of the word target. Irrespective of valence, face emojis demonstrated a processing advantage over non-face emojis, implying automatic attention capture. Additionally, the results revealed an interaction between prime-target congruency and valence, with a facilitatory effect for positive, but not negative, items, suggesting a valence-specific mechanism of affective priming in the lexical decision task. The research suggests that the rapid integration of emoji content occurs during the early stages of visual word recognition, with heightened attentional sensitivity to both face-like and positive stimuli when reading digital communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the impact of neighborhood size (number of other two-character words sharing the same character at the same position) on Chinese lexical processing, along with its joint effects with variables such as character frequency, word frequency, and semantic transparency. Previous factorial experiments have yielded conflicting results that are difficult to reconcile with existing models (Li et al., 2015, 2017). To provide high-powered tests for these theoretically important effects on visual word recognition, we leveraged the megastudy approach and used linear mixed-effect analyses to investigate lexical decision and naming responses to a large pool of two-character Chinese words (N > 17,000) sourced from Tse et al.'s (2017, 2023) database. In all analyses we controlled for extraneous orthographic (e.g., stroke count), phonological (e.g., consistency), and semantic (e.g., transparency) variables. In addition to evaluating Li et al.'s (2015, 2017) models, we also investigated whether the parallel dual-route mechanism, which entails lexical access via whole-word or character decomposition-then-composition, could account for neighborhood size effect and its interactions in lexical decision and naming. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings on the specificity of lexical effects with regard to character position and lexical processing task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of phonological well-formedness constraints in Mandarin speakers' phonotactic grammar and how they affect online speech processing. Mandarin non-words can be categorized into systematic gaps and accidental gaps, depending on whether they violate principled phonotactic constraints based on the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP). Non-word acceptability judgment experiments have shown that systematic gaps received lower wordlikeness ratings than accidental gaps. Using a lexical decision task, this study found that systematic gaps were rejected significantly faster than accidental gaps, even after lexical statistics were taken into account. These findings thus provide converging evidence for the essential status of the OCP-based phonotactic constraints in Mandarin speakers' phonological knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotion is a fundamental aspect of human life and therefore is critically encoded in language. To facilitate research into the encoding of emotion in language and how emotion associations affect language processing, we present a new set of emotion norms for over 24,000 Dutch words. The emotion norms include ratings of two key dimensions of emotion: valence and arousal, as well as ratings on discrete emotion categories: happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and surprise. We show that emotional information can predict word processing, such that responses to positive words are facilitated in contrast to neutral and negative words. We also demonstrate how the ratings of emotion are related to personality characteristics. The data are available via the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/9htuv/) and serve as a valuable resource for research into emotion as well as in applied settings such as healthcare and digital communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Words with larger morphological families elicit shorter response times in visual lexical decision, but in auditory lexical decision, family size effects have been reported to be facilitative, absent, or inhibitory. We revisit the auditory family size effect and different family size definitions by re-analysing data from two large lexical decision experiments. The results suggest that words with larger families elicit smaller response latencies not only in visual but also in auditory lexical decision. However, in auditory lexical decision, this effect is insignificant when the word contains a prefix. In both modalities, it is the degree of semantic similarity and the degree of form overlap between a word and its family members, rather than the mere presence of overlap, that seem to drive the family size effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processing action words (e.g., fork, throw) engages neurocognitive motor representations, consistent with embodied cognition principles. Despite age-related neurocognitive changes that could affect action words, and a rapidly aging population, the impact of healthy aging on action-word processing is poorly understood. Previous research suggests that in lexical tasks demanding semantic access, such as picture naming, higher motor-relatedness can enhance performance (e.g., fork vs. pier)—particularly in older adults, perhaps due to the age-related relative sparing of motor-semantic circuitry, which can support action words. However, motor-relatedness was recently found to affect performance in younger but not older adults in lexical decision. We hypothesized this was due to decreased semantic access in this task, especially in older adults. Here we tested effects of motor-relatedness on 2,174 words in younger and older adults not only in lexical decision but also in reading aloud, in which semantic access is minimal. Mixed-effects regression, controlling for phonological, lexical, and semantic variables, yielded results consistent with our predictions. In lexical decision, younger adults were faster and more accurate at words with higher-motor relatedness, whereas older adults showed no motor-relatedness effects. In reading aloud, neither age group showed such effects. Multiple sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the patterns were robust. Altogether, whereas previous research indicates that in lexical tasks demanding semantic access, higher motor-relatedness can enhance performance, especially in older adults, evidence now suggests that such effects are attenuated with decreased semantic access, which in turn depends on the task as well as aging itself. Public Significance Statement: Action words (such as fork or throw) can be processed faster and more accurately than nonaction words (such as pier or think), but this effect depends on the task and one's age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionThe syllable frequency effect refers to that during the lexical decision task, words beginning with high-frequency syllables elicit slower responses than words beginning with low-frequency ones, indicating an inhibitory effect. However, previous studies in Korean have yielded mixed results. For morphologically simple words, an inhibitory or null effect has been observed, whereas in morphologically complex words, a facilitative effect has been reported. Unfortunately, the explanations for these mixed findings remain unclear. This study employed both behavioral and electrophysiological methods to investigate the temporal dynamics of the facilitative syllable frequency effect in Korean morphologically complex nouns. A secondary aim was to explore whether syllable frequency is modulated by stem length as a factor in morphological processing, at both the behavioral and neurophysiological levels.MethodsTwenty-eight participants (mean age = 25.14, 9 female) performed a lexical decision task, responding whether visually presented stimuli were valid Korean words, while EEG data were recorded. The experimental condition included syllable frequency (2: High vs. low) and stem length (2: Long vs. Short).ResultsThe behavioral data showed that lexical decision latencies were faster for morphologically complex nouns with higher syllable frequencies compared to those with lower frequencies. The ERP data revealed a significant syllable frequency effect on the P300 component, reflecting early visual word processing. However, no significant effect was found in the N400 component. Although stem length did not significantly influence behavioral results, it did show significant differences in N250 amplitudes. Notably, an interaction between syllable frequency and stem length had a significant effect on N400, in contrast to the behavioral findings.DiscussionsThe findings suggest that, in the processing of morphologically complex words in Korean, syllable frequency serves as partial information that facilitates lexical decisions through the fast-guess mechanism, as proposed by the MROM-S model. Furthermore, the delayed time window for syllable processing may stemmed from a different stage of the processing between morphologically complex words and morphologically simple words. Lastly, stem length, as a form of morphological processing, may interact with syllable frequency during the lexical access stage.

Grainger et al. examined flanker effects in an experiment where target words could be morphologically complex (e.g. farmer), have a pseudo-morphological structure (e.g. corner), or have no morphological structure (e.g. cashew). Target words were flanked on both sides by the left-aligned embedded word in the related flanker condition (e.g. farm farmer farm; corn corner corn; cash cashew cash). Effects of related flankers were compared with matched unrelated flankers (e.g. book farmer book). Significantly greater effects of flanker relatedness were found with morphologically related flankers compared with both pseudo-morphological flankers and non-morphological embedded word flankers. However, more recent work in Spanish has failed to replicate this specific pattern. We therefore sought to replicate our findings in French, while increasing experimental power and modifying the nonword targets. The results of the present study successfully replicate the findings of Grainger et al. [(2021). Morphological processing in the flankers task. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 36(3), 288–295. ]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading morphologically complex words requires analysis of their morphemic subunits (e.g., play + er); however, the positional constraints of morphemic processing are still little understood. The current study involved three unprimed lexical decision experiments to directly compare the positional encoding of stems and affixes during reading and to investigate the role of semantics during the position encoding of morphemes. Experiment 1 revealed that transposed compound wordswere harder to reject than their controls (e.g., dreamday vs. shadeday), whereas there was no difference between transposed suffixed words and their controls (e.g., fulpain vs. adepain). Experiment 2 replicated the results for transposed compound words of the first experiment and further showed that there was no difference between transposed prefixed words and their controls (e.g., qualifydis vs. qualifymis). Experiment 3 investigated the role of semantic transparency in morpheme transposition effects and revealed a larger morpheme transposition effect for semantically transparent transposed compound words (e.g., cuptea vs. taptea) than for semantically opaque transposed compound words (e.g., linedead vs. deskdead). These results bring to light important differences in the positional encoding of stems and affixes, suggesting that prefixes and suffixes are recognized in a position-dependent manner compared to the position-independent encoding of embedded stems and that morpheme transposition effects are guided by semantics. The current findings call for more clearly specified theoretical models of visual word recognition that reflect the distinct positional constraints of stems and affixes, as well as the influence of semantics on morphological processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a form priming experiment with a lexical decision task, we investigated whether the representational structure of lexical tone in lexical memory impacts spoken-word recognition in Mandarin. Target monosyllabic words were preceded by five types of primes: (1) the same real words (/lun4/-/lun4/), (2) real words with only tone contrasts (/lun2/-/lun4/), (3) unrelated real words (/pie3/-/lun4/), (4) pseudowords with only tone contrasts (*/lun3/-/lun4/), and (5) unrelated pseudowords (*/tai3/-/lun4/). We found a facilitation effect in target words with pseudoword primes that share the segmental syllable but contrast in tones (*/lun3/-/lun4/). Moreover, no evident form priming effect was observed in target words primed by real words with only tone contrasts (/lun2/-/lun4/). These results suggest that the recognition of a tone word is influenced by the representational level of tone accessed by the prime word. The distinctive priming patterns between real-word and pseudoword primes are best explained by the connectionist models of tone-word recognition, which assume a hierarchical representation of lexical tone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How compound words are processed remains a central question in research on Chinese reading. The Chinese reading model assumes that all possible words sharing characters are activated during word processing and these activated words compete for a winner (Li & Pollatsek, 2020). The present studies aimed to examine whether embedded component words compete with whole compound words in Chinese reading. In Study 1, we analyzed two existing lexical decision databases and revealed inhibitory effects of component-word frequency and facilitative effects of character frequency on the first components. In Study 2, we conducted two factorial experiments to further examine the effects of first component-word frequency, with character frequencies controlled. The results consistently indicated significant inhibitory effects of component-word frequency. Collectively, these findings support the theoretical proposition that both component words and compound words are activated and engage in competition during word processing. This provides a new approach to compound word processing in Chinese reading and a possible solution to mixed results of character frequency effects reported in the literature. Public Significance Statement: This study demonstrated that Chinese compound words were processed in a competitive way between whole word and embedded component words. In addition to robust whole-word frequency effects, the component words have inhibitory effects because of competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the effects of hyponymy and emotion on the comprehension and production of compound words. The research subjects are over 2000 concatenated compounds of English taken from the LADEC database (Gagné et al. 2019). The study builds on the research carried out in Charitonidis (2022), according to which context concreteness for the second constituent was a significant positive predictor of lexical decision and naming times from the English Lexicon Project (ELP) and the British Lexicon Project (BLP). In the present paper, the hyponymy norms from Gagné et al. (2020) were added in the analysis. The results show that both hyponymy and context concreteness for the second constituent are relevant. In addition, all models including both variables have a better fit than nested models omitting one of these variables. There is thus strong evidence that both hyponymy and context concreteness for the second constituent are obligatory parameters in compound word processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dyslexia is theorised to be caused by phonological deficits, visuo-attentional deficits, or some combination of the two. The present study contrasted phonological and visuo-attentional theories of dyslexia using a lexical decision task administered to adult participants with and without dyslexia. Homophone and pseudo-homophone stimuli were included to explore whether the two groups differed in their reliance on phonological encoding. Transposed-letter stimuli, including both TL neighbours and TL non-words, measured potential orthographic impairment predicted by visuo-attentional deficit theories. The findings revealed no significant difference in response time or accuracy between the groups for the homophone and pseudo-homophone stimuli. However, dyslexics were significantly slower and less accurate in their responses to the TL stimuli than controls. Thus, dyslexics presented deficits consistent with visuo-attentional theories, but not with the phonological deficit theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We used a novel linguistic training paradigm to investigate the experience-dependent acquisition, representation, and processing of novel emotional and neutral abstract concepts. Participants engaged in mental imagery (n= 32) or lexico-semantic rephrasing (n=34) of linguistic material during five training sessions and successfully learned the novel abstract concepts. Feature production after training showed that specifically emotion features enriched the emotional concepts' representations. Unexpectedly, for participants engaging in vivid mental imagery during training a higher semantic richness of the acquired emotional concepts slowed down lexical decisions. Rephrasing, in turn, promoted a better learning and processing performance than imagery, probably due to stronger established lexical associations. Our results confirm the importance of emotional and linguistic experience and additional deep lexico-semantic processing for the acquisition, representation, and processing of abstract concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lexical properties such as orthographic neighbours have been shown to have an influence on reading and writing; however, this phenomenon is yet to be explored in the Southern Bantu languages. Objectives: We investigate the role of orthographic neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency in reading and spelling in Grade 3 isiXhosa home-language learners. The aim is to establish whether orthographic neighbours facilitate or hinder reading and spelling. The dual-route model of orthographic processing is used to interpret our findings. Method: Data were collected from 97 Grade 3 isiXhosa home-language learners. Lexical decision, word reading, and spelling tasks were administered. Tasks included both real and pseudowords varying in orthographic neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency, while controlling for word length and word frequency. Results: Findings show a significant inhibitory effect of orthographic neighbourhood frequency and word length for spelling accuracy. Longer words with higher frequency neighbours were more likely to be spelt incorrectly. No effect was recorded for the lexical decision and word reading tasks. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that spelling in isiXhosa relies partially on lexical processing strategies, which allows for the inhibitory effects of orthographic neighbours to be observed. While in reading, sublexical processing is more prominent, therefore mitigating the effect of orthographic neighbours. Contribution: Empirical evidence for the effects of orthographic neighbours, specifically in a Southern Bantu language, provides a clearer picture of the underlying cognitive-linguistic processes involved in reading and writing. This evidence may contribute to the development of targeted pedagogical practices to address spelling errors.

Research on orthographic consistency in English words has selectively identified different sub-syllabic units in isolation (grapheme, onset, vowel, coda, rime), yet there is no comprehensive assessment of how these measures affect word identification when taken together. To study which aspects of consistency are more psychologically relevant, we investigated their independent and composite effects on human reading behavior using large-scale databases. Study 1 found effects on adults' naming responses of both feedforward consistency (orthography to phonology) and feedback consistency (phonology to orthography). Study 2 found feedback but no feedforward consistency effects on visual and auditory lexical decision tasks, with the best predictor being a composite measure of consistency across grapheme, rime, OVC, and word-initial letter-phoneme. In Study 3, we explicitly modeled the reading process with forward and backward flow in a bidirectionally connected neural network. The model captured latent dimensions of quasi-regular mapping that explain additional variance in human reading and spelling behavior, compared to the established measures. Together, the results suggest interactive activation between phonological and orthographic word representations. They also validate the role of computational analyses of language to better understand how print maps to sound, and what properties of natural language affect reading complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the processing of lexical elements of idioms in isolation. Using visual word priming, spreading activation for idiomatically related word pairs (e.g., pop–question) was compared to that for semantically related (e.g., answer–question) and unrelated word pairs (e.g., trim–question) in two experiments varying in SOA (500 ms and 350 ms). In line with hybrid theories of idiom representation and processing, facilitatory priming was found in both experiments for idiomatic primes, suggesting a tight link between the words of an idiom that is mediated by a common idiom representation. While idiomatic priming was stable across SOAs, semantic priming was stronger for the short SOA, implying fast and early activation. In conclusion, one lexical element of an idiom can facilitate the processing of another, even if the elements are not presented within a phrasal context (i.e., within an idiom), and without the words being semantically related. We discuss our findings in light of theories about idiom processing, as well as current findings in the field of semantic priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pseudowords are letter strings that look like words but are not words. They are used in psycholinguistic research, particularly in tasks such as lexical decision. In this context, it is essential that the pseudowords respect the orthographic statistics of the target language. Pseudowords that violate them would be too easy to reject in a lexical decision and would not enforce word recognition on real words. We propose a new pseudoword generator, UniPseudo, using an algorithm based on Markov chains of orthographic n-grams. It generates pseudowords from a customizable database, which allows one to control the characteristics of the items. It can produce pseudowords in any language, in orthographic or phonological form. It is possible to generate pseudowords with specific characteristics, such as frequency of letters, bigrams, trigrams, or quadrigrams, number of syllables, frequency of biphones, and number of morphemes. Thus, from a list of words composed of verbs, nouns, adjectives, or adverbs, UniPseudo can create pseudowords resembling verbs, nouns, adjectives, or adverbs in any language using an alphabetic or syllabic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word frequency is a strong predictor in most lexical processing tasks. Thus, any model of word recognition needs to account for howword frequency effects arise. The Discriminative Lexicon Model (DLM)models lexical processing withmappings between words' forms and their meanings. Comprehension and production are modeled via linear mappings between the two domains. So far, the mappings within the model can either be obtained incrementally via error-driven learning, a computationally expensive process able to capture frequency effects, or in an efficient, but frequency-agnostic solution modeling the theoretical endstate of learning (EL) where all words are learned optimally. In the present study we show how an efficient, yet frequency-informed mapping between form and meaning can be obtained (Frequency-informed learning; FIL). We find that FIL well approximates an incremental solution while being computationallymuch cheaper. FIL shows a relatively low type-and high token-accuracy, demonstrating that the model is able to process most word tokens encountered by speakers in daily life correctly. We use FIL to model reaction times in the Dutch Lexicon Project by means of a Gaussian Location Scale Model and find that FIL predicts well the S-shaped relationship between frequency and the mean of reaction times but underestimates the variance of reaction times for low frequency words. FIL is also better able to account for priming effects in an auditory lexical decision task in Mandarin Chinese, compared to EL. Finally, we used ordered data from CHILDES to compare mappings obtained with FIL and incremental learning. We show that themappings are highly correlated, but that with FIL some nuances based on word ordering effects are lost. Our results show how frequency effects in a learning model can be simulated efficiently, and raise questions about how to best account for low-frequency words in cognitive models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Different linguistic factors can influence the recognition of spoken words in French. We are interested in the impact of the linguistic factor of phonological density, which refers to the number of phonological neighbours of words and which is related to the recognition process according to a principle of inhibition and lexical competition. By using a lexical decision task, where half of the words have a low phonological density, and the other half a high phonological density, we aim to measure the reaction times of a group of young French-speaking participants (18-35 years old). The results of the young French-speaking group did not show a phonological density effect, however, these results did show a lexicality effect, demonstrating that the word and pseudo-word recognition task worked well. Thus, from the error analyses, the involvement of another factor, word familiarity, was induced. The post-experimental survey on this new factor showed an imbalance between the high and low density groups. By removing the low familiarity items from the analysis, a significant phonological density effect was obtained at this time. It is essential to discuss the role of word familiarity on spoken word recognition; as well as the material development for spoken word recognition tasks.

Word frequency is a strong predictor in most lexical processing tasks. Thus, any model of word recognition needs to account for how word frequency effects arise. The Discriminative Lexicon Model (DLM) models lexical processing with mappings between words' forms and their meanings. Comprehension and production are modeled via linear mappings between the two domains. So far, the mappings within the model can either be obtained incrementally via error-driven learning, a computationally expensive process able to capture frequency effects, or in an efficient, but frequency-agnostic solution modeling the theoretical endstate of learning (EL) where all words are learned optimally. In the present study we show how an efficient, yet frequency-informed mapping between form and meaning can be obtained (Frequency-informed learning; FIL). We find that FIL well approximates an incremental solution while being computationally much cheaper. FIL shows a relatively low type- and high token-accuracy, demonstrating that the model is able to process most word tokens encountered by speakers in daily life correctly. We use FIL to model reaction times in the Dutch Lexicon Project by means of a Gaussian Location Scale Model and find that FIL predicts well the S-shaped relationship between frequency and the mean of reaction times but underestimates the variance of reaction times for low frequency words. FIL is also better able to account for priming effects in an auditory lexical decision task in Mandarin Chinese, compared to EL. Finally, we used ordered data from CHILDES to compare mappings obtained with FIL and incremental learning. We show that the mappings are highly correlated, but that with FIL some nuances based on word ordering effects are lost. Our results show how frequency effects in a learning model can be simulated efficiently, and raise questions about how to best account for low-frequency words in cognitive models.

Speed and accuracy of lexical access change with healthy ageing and neurodegeneration. While a word's immediate phonological neighbourhood density (i.e. words differing by a single phoneme) influences access, connectivity to all words in the phonological network (i.e. closeness centrality) may influence processing. This study aimed to investigate the effect of closeness centrality on speed and accuracy of lexical processing pre- and post- a single word-training session in healthy younger and older adults, and adults with logopenic primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), which affects phonological processing. Participants included 29 young and 17 older healthy controls, and 10 adults with lvPPA. Participants received one session of word-training on words with high or low closeness centrality, using a picture-word verification task. Changes in lexical decision reaction times (RT) and accuracy were measured. Baseline RT was unaffected by age and accuracy was at ceiling for controls. Post-training, only young adults' RT were significantly faster. Adults with lvPPA were slower and less accurate than controls at baseline, with no training effect. Closeness centrality did not influence performance. Absence of training effect for older adults suggests higher threshold to induce priming, possibly associated with insufficient dosage or fatigue. Implications for word-finding interventions with older adults are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Spanish, the plural form in plural dominant frequency pairs, like "diente/dientes" [tooth/teeth], occurs more frequently than the corresponding singular form. On the other hand, for the singular dominant frequency pairs such as "cometa/cometas" [kite/kites], the singular form is more common than the plural. The recognition of singular forms by adult readers is dependent on the dominance factor, while the identification of plural forms relies on the frequency of the stem. Given that age and reading experience may influence morphological processing of words, we investigate the representation of singulars and plurals in Spanish primary school children in Third Grade (8/9) and Sixth Grade (11/12) and adults through a lexical decision task. Though children's lexical decisions were twice as slow as adults, the pattern of morphological processing was consistent across ages: dominant plural forms resulted in decision times that were comparable to those of non-dominant singular forms, while recognition of singular-dominant forms was quicker than recognition of plural non-dominant forms. It appears that singulars are accessed and stored in the lexical memory as separate entities, while plurals depend on their morphological closer relatives, in this case, the singular forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous research has shown that the emotional content of words affects how quickly they are recognised. One recent measure of word emotionality is emotional experience that measures the degree to which reading a word can invoke emotional experiences tied to the word. Words that are higher in emotional experience are recognised more rapidly in the lexical decision task. Methods: The current study examines how words' emotional experience and participants' emotionality affect performance on the lexical decision task. To this end, participants were given five emotion measures and completed a lexical decision task with words varying on emotional experience. Results: It was found that participants who scored higher on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule showed a weaker emotional experience effect. No other emotion measures interacted with emotional experience. Conclusions: These results are predicted by and interpreted within a framework where the semantic representation of words includes emotion information that is grounded in experience of our internal states. Highlights: What is already known about this topicThe emotional content of words influences how rapidly they are recognised.One way that emotion is measured in words is with emotional experience. Words higher in emotional experience are associated with more emotions than are those lower in emotional experience. Research has shown that emotional experience facilitates visual word recognition.The emotionality of the reader also influences word recognition. What this paper addsThis study seeks to answer the question of whether word and participant emotion interact during visual word recognition.The results indicate that participants that experience emotions more show a smaller word emotional experience effect. Implications for theory, policy or practiceThis work indicates that individual differences play a key role in the word recognition process.These findings provide support for theories where the semantic representation is based, at least in part, on emotional information that is grounded in our experience of internal states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. We examine the impact of orthographic depth focusing on English and Italian—two languages with quite different orthographies. Materials and Methods. We review a set of studies comparing English and Italian readers on time measures, in particular, reaction times (RTs). An advantage of using time measures is the availability of processing models that provide a useful interpretative framework (i.e., rate and amount model, RAM; difference engine model, DEM). The data indicate that English children are generally less accurate but not slower than Italian children; furthermore, they are more variable than Italian readers, a tendency confirmed with different paradigms (e.g., rapid serial visual presentation) and age groups (i. e., young adults). While data from Italian children fit very closely with the predictions of the RAM and DEM, those of English children showed several deviations from these models. Thus, we examined whether differences in strategy (or a response criterion) might explain such deviations. In a lexical decision study based on the diffusion model, English young adults showed a more lenient criterion, i. e., they needed less evidence to decide on the lexical quality of the stimulus. Drawing on the multiple read-out model (MROM), we propose that the irregularity of the English orthography may favor reference on the Σ criterion (based on general evidence), while the regular Italian orthography may favor reliance on the M criterion (based on evidence for a specific word). Results. Overall, we put forward two working hypotheses to interpret the overall pattern of experimental findings. First, the characteristics of the English orthography (possibly emphasized by the teaching method used) foster a global, lexical, approach to recognizing words. Second, not all children can effectively rely on such global processing, and this may be the main source of large individual differences in the English sample. Conclusion. Understanding the source of these individual differences still represents a challenging task for future research.

Imageability has been shown to be one of the critical psycholinguistic variables that help us understand lexical processing across many languages, but it is a less studied variable in non-alphabetic Chinese with a large population of native speakers. The present study sought to build up the first large-scale imageability database for Chinese by collecting imageability ratings for 10,426 Chinese two-character words from the Common Lexical Database for Compulsory Education in China. A total of 415 native Mandarin speakers from mainland China participated in the ratings, with an average of 22 participants rating the imageability of each word on a 7-point scale. The results supported the high reliability and validity of the present imageability ratings. Furthermore, the current work examined the contribution of the imageability ratings to Chinese lexical processing while controlling for existing psycholinguistic variables, including concreteness, age of acquisition (AoA), valence, and arousal, as well as other lexical variables such as word frequency. The results suggest the additional explanatory power of imageability to Chinese lexical processing after controlling for the aforementioned variables. Interestingly, further analysis revealed that concreteness, which is thought to be similar to imageability, explained a smaller amount of variance in Chinese lexical processing compared to imageability. Therefore, the findings point to the important contribution of imageability to Chinese lexical processing and its advantage over concreteness. The current imageability database is downloadable in the supplemental materials, thus open to all researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage speakers contend with at least two languages: the less dominant first language (L1), that is, the heritage language, and the more dominant second language (L2). In some cases, their L1 and L2 bear striking phonological differences. In the current study, we investigate Toronto-born Cantonese heritage speakers and their maintenance of Cantonese lexical tone, a linguistic feature that is absent from English, the more dominant L2. Across two experiments, Cantonese heritage speakers were tested on their phonetic/phonological and lexical encoding of tone in Cantonese. Experiment 1 was an AX discrimination task with varying inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs), which revealed that heritage speakers discriminated tone pairs with disparate pitch contours better than those with shared pitch contours. Experiment 2 was a medium-term repetition priming experiment, designed to extend the findings of Experiment 1 by examining tone representations at the lexical level. We observed a positive correlation between English dominance and priming in tone minimal pairs that shared contours. Thus, while increased English dominance does not affect heritage speakers' phonological-level representations, tasks that require lexical access suggest that heritage Cantonese speakers may not robustly and fully distinctively encode Cantonese tone in lexical memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A very common feature in most writing systems is the presence of diacritics: distinguishing marks that are added for various linguistic reasons. Most models of reading, however, have not yet captured the nature of these marks. Recent priming experiments in several languages have attempted to resolve how diacritical letters are represented in the visual word recognition system. Since the function and appearance of diacritics can change from one language to the other, it is hard to interpret the accumulated evidence. With this in mind, we conducted two masked priming lexical decision experiments in Hungarian, a transparent orthography with a wide use of diacritic vowels that allows for clear-cut manipulations. In the two experiments, we manipulated the presence or absence of the same diacritic (i.e., the acute accent) on two specific sets of letters that behave differently. In Experiment 1, the manipulation changed only the length of vowels, whereas in Experiment 2, it also changed the quality (e.g., a↝/ɒ/ vs. á↝/aː/). In both experiments, we found that primes with an omitted diacritic work just as good as the identity primes (nema→NÉMA = néma→NÉMA [mute]), whereas the addition of a diacritic comes with a cost (mése→MESE > mese→MESE [tale]). This asymmetry favors a purely perceptual account of the very early stages of word recognition, making it blind to the function of diacritics. We suggest that the linguistic functions of diacritics originate at later processing stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processing of Arabic digits is a core difficulty of children suffering from mathematical learning disability (MLD). Dominant accounts assume a semantic impairment affecting either the magnitude representation per se or its access from numerical symbols. But recent data have raised the hypothesis that the impaired processing of Arabic digits may be explained by a selective deficit of digit visual recognition (i.e., recognising a symbol as one of the digits, no matter its identity or numerical meaning). This study aims at testing whether the difficulty to process Arabic digits remains prevalent in adults with MLD and whether it is effectively associated with a digit visual recognition deficit. To do so, we compared 19 adults with MLD to 19 matched controls in an Arabic digit comparison task that required to identify the largest of two digits, and in an Arabic digit lexical decision task that required to decide whether a visual stimulus is a digit or not. The results showed that MLD participants took more time than control participants to perform the comparison task. In contrast, their performance in the digit lexical decision task was within the range of the control participants. Overall, this finding indicates that adults with MLD continue to experience difficulties to process the magnitude of Arabic digits efficiently, and this cannot be explained by a visual recognition deficit for Arabic digits. We conclude that their difficulties are best explained by an impaired representation of number magnitude or by an impaired access to this representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to provide an overview of the current status of visual word recognition research, from the main computational models and their current challenges, to the educational and methodological implications of studies in this field. Visual word recognition is a critical reading process that connects visual sensation and perception with linguistic (sentence, text) processing. For this reason, it has captured the interest of researchers in cognitive science. Importantly, it is particularly easy to model quantitatively and researchers have developed a number of computational models to explain the processes involved. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of corpora in several languages, including average identification times of thousands of words, allowing virtual simulations of experiments to test the predictions of theoretical models without the recruitment of participants. Nevertheless, despite the advances achieved in the understanding of word processing, these models still have outstanding questions to be answered, such as the role of visual information during word recognition, or how diacritics are represented at the letter level. On the applied side, word recognition research has also contributed to the improvement of educational techniques, such as the development of friendly fonts for different populations, along with methodological innovations in cognitive psychology, such as the use of linear-mixed effects models, Bayesian methods, and multi-laboratory approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the accuracy of English-speaking learners of Spanish in storing L2 sounds within cognates and noncognates, specifically in words containing 〈g〉 and 〈h〉, which have differing cross-linguistic phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In the first task, participants heard Spanish words with target-like pronunciations of 〈g〉 and 〈h〉 or inaccurate pronunciations with an English-like phonemic substitution for these graphemes, and they decided whether or not they were words. The second task had participants decide between the two pronunciations of each Spanish word and select the accurate pronunciation. The findings in both tasks showed that for L2 learners, 〈h〉 cognate words had less accurate phonological representations compared to all other conditions, possibly due to the greater consistency in phoneme-grapheme correspondence for 〈h〉 in English. These results show that cognate status and orthographic (in)congruity interact to influence the accuracy of L2 lexical encoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In visual word processing modeling, few models have success-fully accounted for a large variety of tasks, and large corpora ofbehavioral observations. We consider a dataset from a megas-tudy, in which participants performed three tasks (lexical de-cision, word naming, and word recognition in a progressivedemasking situation), on the same, large set of stimuli. Wedefine the BRAID-Phon model, an extension of a previousprobabilistic model, the BRAID model, whose originality isits visuo-attentional component, in which a visuo-attentionaldistribution spatially deploys sensory processing capabilities.BRAID-Phon includes phonological representations of words,allowing simulating the naming task. We simulated the threetasks on the dataset we considered, and analyzed predicted re-action times in terms of word frequency and word length ef-fects. Simulation results show that BRAID-Phon successfullycaptures the direction and order of magnitude of the observedeffects, in all three tasks.

Previous research on argument structure (AS) has shown that verb processing costs scale with the number of arguments and as a result of non-canonical thematic mapping. The Basque language has unique AS: Basque unergatives and transitives select transitive auxiliary and ergative subject case markings, while unaccusatives are syntactically less complex. We studied the contribution of these syntactic factors in seventy-one, simultaneous Basque-Spanish bilinguals, measuring their performance on unergative, unaccusatives, and transitive verbs in a lexical decision and a sentence production task. We observed no differences between verb groups in the lexical decision task. In the production task, Basque unergatives elicited more ungrammatical sentences, while Spanish unaccusatives, in line with previous findings, elicited longer speech onset times. Our results indicate that AS processing can differ across languages, calling for further cross-linguistic investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models of decision making focusing on two-alternative choices have classically described motor-response execution as a nondecisional stage that serially follows the termination of decision processes. Recent evidence, however, points toward a more continuous transition between decision and motor processes. We investigated this transition in two lexical decisions and one object decision task. By recording the electromyographic (EMG) signal associated with the muscle responsible for the manual responses (i.e., button press), we partitioned single-trial reaction times into premotor (the time elapsing from stimulus onset until the onset of the EMG burst) and motor times (the time elapsing from the onset of the EMG burst and the button press), with the latter measuring response execution. Responses were slower for pseudowords and pseudo-objects compared to words and real objects. Importantly, these effects were reliable even at the level of motor time measures. Differently, despite the reliable effect at the level of reaction times and premotor times, there was no difference in motor times between high- and low-frequency words. Although these results, in line with recent evidence, challenge a purely noncognitive characterization of motor-response execution, they further suggest that motor times may selectively capture specific decisional components, which we identify with late-occurring verification and/or control mechanisms. Public Significance Statement: This study highlights specific decisional components that are still active during action. Even in the context of simple, fast, and discrete manual responses, it appears that part of the decision is still ongoing when we begin to move. Importantly, these motor-decisional components seem to reflect specific cognitive processes, possibly related to response monitoring and/or late verification processes that perform an additional check on difficult items for which we have no preexisting representations stored in long-term memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examined the effects of word and character frequency across three commonly used word-identification tasks (lexical decision, naming, and sentence reading) using the same set of twocharacter target words (N = 60) and participants (N = 82). Facilitatory effects of word frequency were observed across all three tasks. The character-frequency effects, however, were facilitatory for naming but inhibitory for both lexical decision and reading. Further correlational analyses indicated that participants' performance (as measured using overall response latencies and the sizes of the frequency effects) was not consistent across tasks but was relatively reliable within the lexical-decision and reading tasks. These findings are discussed in relation to what is known about the reading of Chinese versus alphabetic scripts, word-identification tasks, and models of word identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphological processing has been extensively studied in English and European languages, but there is a growing interest in extending the research to other languages. Here we examined Malay, an Austronesian language that is morphologically rich. We investigated the effects of morphological constituents on lexical decisions for prefixed words. Specifically, we explored whether readers are sensitive to any distributional properties of the prefix and root morphemes. Variables investigated included length and family size for both prefixes and roots, as well as number of allomorphs, consistency, and productivity for prefixes. Decision latencies were collected for 1,280 Malay words of various morphological structures. Data from the 640 prefixed words were analyzed in a series of GAMM models. We observed a facilitative effect of root family size and an effect of several distributional properties of prefixes on decision latencies after accounting for word frequency and length. Furthermore, a larger interaction between frequency and several distributional properties of prefixes was found for words with three-letter prefixes than for those with two-letter prefixes. These findings provide insight into the types of distributional properties to which Malay readers are sensitive in multimorphemic words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphological processing in visual word recognition has been extensively studied in a few languages, but other languages with interesting morphological systems have received little attention. Here, we examined Malay, an Austronesian language that is agglutinative. Agglutinative languages typically have a large number of morphemes per word. Our primary aim was to facilitate research on morphological processing in Malay by augmenting the Malay Lexicon Project (a database containing lexical information for almost 10,000 words) to include a breakdown of the words into morphemes as well as morphological properties for those morphemes. A secondary goal was to determine which morphological variables influence Malay word recognition. We collected lexical decision data for Malay words that had one prefix and one suffix, and first examined the predictive power of 15 morphological and four lexical variables on response times (RT). Of these variables, two lexical and three morphological variables emerged as strong predictors of RT. In GAMM models, we found a facilitatory effect of root family size, and inhibitory effects of prefix length and prefix percentage of more frequent words (PFMF) on RT. Next, we explored the interactions between overall word frequency and several of these predictors. Of particular interest, there was a significant word frequency by root family size interaction in which the effect of root family size is stronger for low-frequency words. We hope that this initial work on morphological processing in Malay inspires further research in this and other understudied languages, with the goal of developing a universal theory of morphological processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work collected familiarity norms for 20,275 two-character, 1231 three-character, and 2819 four-character simplified Chinese words from 1300 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The familiarity of each word was rated on a 7-point scale by at least 21 participants. The results supported the reliability and validity of the present familiarity ratings, which is the first large familiarity database for Chinese in the field. These familiarity norms can be downloaded from the supplemental materials. Furthermore, the contribution of familiarity to Chinese lexical processing was investigated using the present familiarity ratings and previous data (lexical features and visual lexical decision), mainly from two major Chinese lexicon projects, MELD-SCH and CLP. Regression analysis suggests that familiarity explained a substantial percentage of the variance in lexical processing of both simplified and traditional Chinese words, over and above the effects of word frequency and other lexical features, including age of acquisition (AoA). Further analysis identified a significantly greater familiarity effect for lower-frequency words than that for higher-frequency words. Together, among the first, our findings support the important contribution of familiarity with Chinese words to lexical processing, especially for low-frequency words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that processes of word recognition are influenced by the emotional content of a word. This pattern is most readily explained by the motivated attention and affective states model (Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 1997), which states that emotional stimuli are motivationally significant and capture attention. Drawing on this theoretical account, the current study compared lexical decision response times to positive and negative emotion words versus neutral words across two experimental environments - a traditional lab-based environment and a web-based environment. In addition, the experiment was conducted using Korean words presented to native Korean speakers in order to test whether the emotionality effect emerges in a non-English language. The results revealed faster response times to emotion words versus neutral words across both experimental environments with no evidence of a difference between the two environments. These findings provide important evidence that emotion words successfully attract attention and facilitate word processing even in situations where participants might be more easily distracted than they would be in a traditional lab setting. This work also constitutes the first demonstration of an emotionality effect in Korean word recognition, thus providing further evidence that the emotionality effect may be a language-universal phenomenon.

This study investigated the processing of lexical elements of idioms in isolation. Using visual word priming, spreading activation for idiomatically related word pairs (e.g., pop–question) was compared to that for semantically related (e.g., answer–question) and unrelated word pairs (e.g., trim–question) in two experiments varying in SOA (500 ms and 350 ms). In line with hybrid theories of idiom representation and processing, facilitatory priming was found in both experiments for idiomatic primes, suggesting a tight link between the words of an idiom that is mediated by a common idiom representation. While idiomatic priming was stable across SOAs, semantic priming was stronger for the short SOA, implying fast and early activation. In conclusion, one lexical element of an idiom can facilitate the processing of another, even if the elements are not presented within a phrasal context (i.e., within an idiom), and without the words being semantically related. We discuss our findings in light of theories about idiom processing, as well as current findings in the field of semantic priming.

IntroductionCurrent neurobiological-inspired models of visual-word recognition propose that letter detectors in the word recognition system can tolerate some variations in the visual form of the letters. However, it is unclear whether this tolerance extends to novel ligatures, which combine two letters into a single glyph.MethodsTo investigate this, the present study utilized a masked priming experiment with a lexical decision task to examine whether primes containing novel ligatures are effective in activating their corresponding base word, relative to omitted-letter primes, in the initial stages of word processing. For each target word (e.g., VIRTUAL), were created an identity prime (virtual), a prime containing a novel ligature of two of the letters (e.g., virtual; “ir” in a single glyph), and an omitted-letter prime where one letter was removed (e.g., vrtual [omitted-vowel] in Experiment 1; vitual [omitted-consonant] in Experiment 2).ResultsResults showed that the presence of a novel ligature in the prime resulted in faster lexical decision times compared to a prime with an omitted vowel (Experiment 1), but not with an omitted consonant (Experiment 2). Furthermore, the performance with the primes containing the novel ligature was not different from that of the identity primes.DiscussionThese results suggest that the word recognition system can quickly enable separate letter detectors for novel ligatures. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the front-end of visual-word recognition.