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Second language (L2) grammar learning is difficult. Two frameworks—the psycholinguistic lexical bottleneck hypothesis and the neurocognitive declarative/procedural model—predict that faster L2 lexical processing should facilitate L2 incidental grammar learning. We tested these predictions in a pretest–posttest syntactic adaptation study of English relative‐clause attachment preferences. First‐language German speakers listened to relative clauses disambiguated to the English low‐attachment preference (secretaries of the professor who is/naps at home)—via either a copula (e.g., is), which should be processed rapidly (copula group; n = 48), or a lexical verb (e.g., naps), which should be processed more slowly (lexical group; n = 48). Only the copula group showed significant pretest‐to‐posttest learning. Moreover, the amount of learning was predicted by procedural learning abilities in the copula group, but by vocabulary size in the lexical group. The results, which are consistent with both frameworks, show that the L2 lexicon impacts L2 grammar learning, and reveal moderating psycholinguistic and neurocognitive variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Successful sentence production requires lexical encoding and ordering them into a correct syntactic structure. It remains unclear how different processes involved in sentence production are affected by healthy aging. We investigated (a) if and how aging affects lexical encoding and syntactic formulation during sentence production, using auditory lexical priming and eye tracking-while-speaking paradigms and (b) if and how verbal working memory contributes to age-related changes in sentence production. Methods: Twenty older and 20 younger adults described transitive and dative action pictures following auditory lexical primes, by which the relative ease of encoding the agent or theme nouns (for transitive pictures) and the theme and goal nouns (for dative pictures) was manipulated. The effects of lexical priming on off-line syntactic production and real-time eye fixations to the primed character were measured. Results: In offline production, older adults showed comparable priming effects to younger adults, using the syntactic structure that allows earlier mention of the primed lexical item in both transitive and dative sentences. However, older adults showed longer lexical priming effects on eye fixations to the primed character during the early stages of sentence planning. Preliminary analysis indicated that reduced verbal working memory may in part account for longer lexical encoding, particularly for older adults. Conclusion: These findings indicate that syntactic flexibility for formulating different grammatical structures remains largely robust with aging. However, lexical encoding processes are more susceptible to age-related changes, possibly due to changes in verbal working memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on L2 (i.e., second language) Chinese compound processing have focused on the relative efficiency of two routes: holistic processing versus combinatorial processing. However, it is still unclear whether Chinese compounds are processed with multilevel representations among L2 learners due to the hierarchical structure of the characters. Therefore, taking a multivariate approach, the present study evaluated the relative influence and importance of different grain sizes of lexical information in an L2 Chinese two-character compound decision task. Results of supervised component generalized linear regression models with random forests analysis revealed that the orthographic, phonological and semantic information all contributed to L2 compound processing, but the L2 learners used more orthographic processing strategies and fewer phonological processing strategies compared to the native speakers. Specifically, the orthographic information was activated at the whole-word, the character and the radical levels in orthographic processing, and the phonological information at the whole-word, the syllable, and the phoneme levels all exerted contributions in phonological processing. Furthermore, the semantic information of the whole words and the constituents was accessed in semantic processing. These findings together suggest that the L2 learners are able to use cues at all levels simultaneously to process Chinese compound words, supporting a multi-route model with a hierarchical morphological structure in such processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For bilinguals, lexical access in one language may affect, or be affected by, activation of words in another language. Research to date suggests seemingly contradictory effects of such cross-linguistic influence (CLI): in some cases CLI facilitates lexical access while in others it is a hindrance. Here we provide a comprehensive review of CLI effects drawn from multiple disciplines and paradigms. We describe the contexts within which CLI gives rise to facilitation and interference and suggest that these two general effects arise from separate mechanisms that are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, we argue that facilitation is ubiquitous, occurring in virtually all instances of CLI, while interference is not always present and depends on levels of cross-language lexical competition. We discuss three critical factors – language context, direction, and modality of CLI – which appear to modulate facilitation and interference. Overall, we hope to provide a general framework for investigating CLI in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Words with high orthographic relatedness are termed "word neighbors" (angle/angel; birch/birth). Activation-based models of word recognition assume that lateral inhibition occurs between words and their activated neighbors. However, studies of eye movements during reading have not found inhibitory effects in early measures assumed to reflect lexical access (e.g., gaze duration). Instead, inhibition in eye-movement studies has been found in later measures of processing (e.g., total time, regressions in). We conducted an eye-movement boundary change study (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 7(1), 65-81, 1975) that manipulated the parafoveal preview of the word following the neighbor word (word N+1). In this way, we explored whether the late inhibitory effects seen with transposed letter words and words with higher-frequency neighbors result from reduced parafoveal preview due to increased foveal load and/or interference during late stages of lexical processing (the L2 stage within the E-Z Reader framework). For word N+1, while there were clear preview effects, there was not an effect of the neighborhood status of word N, nor a significant interaction. This suggests that the late inhibitory effects of earlier eye-movement studies are driven by misidentification of neighbor words rather than being due to increased foveal load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PurposeSuccessful sentence production requires lexical encoding and ordering them into a correct syntactic structure. It remains unclear how different processes involved in sentence production are affected by healthy aging. We investigated (a) if and how aging affects lexical encoding and syntactic formulation during sentence production, using auditory lexical priming and eye tracking-while-speaking paradigms and (b) if and how verbal working memory contributes to age-related changes in sentence production.MethodsTwenty older and 20 younger adults described transitive and dative action pictures following auditory lexical primes, by which the relative ease of encoding the agent or theme nouns (for transitive pictures) and the theme and goal nouns (for dative pictures) was manipulated. The effects of lexical priming on off-line syntactic production and real-time eye fixations to the primed character were measured.ResultsIn offline production, older adults showed comparable priming effects to younger adults, using the syntactic structure that allows earlier mention of the primed lexical item in both transitive and dative sentences. However, older adults showed longer lexical priming effects on eye fixations to the primed character during the early stages of sentence planning. Preliminary analysis indicated that reduced verbal working memory may in part account for longer lexical encoding, particularly for older adults.ConclusionThese findings indicate that syntactic flexibility for formulating different grammatical structures remains largely robust with aging. However, lexical encoding processes are more susceptible to age-related changes, possibly due to changes in verbal working memory.

Lexical ambiguity is pervasive among Chinese characters as many of them are polysemantic, with one orthographic form carrying unrelated meanings, related meanings, or sometimes both unrelated and related meanings. A large-scale database with ambiguity measures for simplified Chinese characters has yet to be developed, which could greatly benefit psycholinguistic research on the Chinese language or cross-language comparisons. This article reports two sets of ratings by native speakers, the perceived number of meanings (pNoM) for 4,363 characters and the perceived relatedness of meanings (pRoM) for a subset of 1,053 characters. These rating-based ambiguity measures capture the representational nuance about a character's meanings stored in average native speakers' mental lexicon, which tends to be obscured by dictionary- and corpus-based ambiguity measures. Consequently, they each account for a reliable portion of variance in the efficiency of character processing, above and beyond the effects of character frequency, age of acquisition, and other types of ambiguity measures. Theoretical and empirical implications with regard to the plurality and the relatedness of character meanings, the two focal aspects of debate on lexical ambiguity, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have investigated the effects of word frequency (WF), age of acquisition (AoA), and animacy on picture naming in volunteers and those with aphasia. But none have controlled for any possible interactions among these three variables during noun retrieval and whether WF and AoA influence verb retrieval in ways that are similar to that observed during noun retrieval. The main purpose of this study was to examine the influences of WF, AoA, and animacy on noun retrieval in both volunteers and participants with aphasia and to compare these results to the effects of AoA and WF in both groups during verb retrieval. A factorial approach was used to study the effects of (a) WF, AoA, and animacy on picture naming for 249 nouns, and (b) the effects of WF and AoA on picture naming for 88 verbs. Fifteen volunteers with no history of neurologic or psychiatric impairment and 13 people with aphasia participated in this study. Naming latencies using key press procedures were used to assess the effects of the independent variables. Linear mixed effects with random intercepts were modeled to analyze the results. Nouns with early AoA and high WF were named significantly faster than all nouns with late AoA. There were no differences between naming speeds for animate vs. inanimate nouns. Animate nouns with early AoA and high frequency were named significantly faster than early, animate nouns with low frequency. Low word frequency facilitated naming by the participants with aphasia for early AoA verbs but slowed the volunteers' naming for these verbs. Participants responded significantly faster to nouns versus verbs regardless of AoA and WF. Controlling for animacy in noun picture naming produces novel findings regarding the effects of WF and AoA on word retrieval. The interaction among WF, AoA, and animacy is more consequential for picture naming speed than the specific effects of any one of these variables alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This paper seeks to determine the degree to which bilinguals and monolinguals use the semantic information available to them to activate semantically related lexical associates and facilitate processing. Design: We conduct a visual word masked priming task with 300 pairs of words that differed in forward strength of association in English-dominant early-acquiring and late bilinguals and monolinguals. We measured the reaction time for participants who completed a semantic judgment. Data and Analysis: Reaction times from 34 college-aged bilinguals and 28 monolinguals were analyzed with a series of analyses of variance (ANOVAs). The coefficient of variation (CV), a measure of efficiency, was calculated and used to compare speaker groups. Conclusions: Results indicated bilinguals were generally slower than monolinguals and did not display a benefit of additional semantic context on reaction time speed. The increase of semantic information in highly associated word pairs compared to unassociated word pairs did not increase reaction time in bilinguals to the same degree as it did in monolinguals. Comparing CV values indicate that the speaker groups were processing semantic information with approximately equal efficiency, although both groups were processing at different speeds. Originality: This study expands on previous research exploring the effect of semantic relations across three word strengths conditions and using visual pairs in a masked priming paradigm using predominantly English-dominant bilinguals. Significance: The findings indicate that even early-acquiring bilinguals may not be using meaning-related information to activate semantic associates in the same way as monolinguals. Such differences with word-level processing and activation may contribute to bilinguals' differences and delays in sentence processing tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elucidating the interaction between lexical processing and word learning is essential for a complete understanding of the underlying mechanisms of each of them. Long-term priming for words reflects an interplay between lexical processing and word learning. Although robust long-term priming effects have been found between two occurrences of the same word and between semantically similar words, it remains unclear whether long-term priming between orthographically similar words (i.e., long-term form priming) is a reliable effect. Following the theoretical analysis based on the connectionist framework, we articulated the possibility that long-term form priming might be modulated by the phonological congruency between the prime and target words, and that if this modulator was under control, reliable effects of long-term form priming would emerge. However, this hypothesis has not been adequately tested empirically. The present study tested this hypothesis by using Chinese phonograms and the phonetic radicals embedded in them as the prime and target items. In three experiments that varied in the types of stimuli and testing tasks, we consistently found that when the prime and target had the same phonology, naming the prime facilitated later processing of the target, while when they had different phonologies, the priming effect was inhibitory. These observations were consistent with the connectionist account of long-term priming for words. Our findings help confirm the reliability, generalizability, and robustness of long-term form priming and elucidate its underlying mechanisms, and suggesting promising future directions on the interactions between lexical processing and word learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates factors influencing lexical access in language production across modalities (signed and oral). Data from deaf and hearing signers were reanalyzed (Baus and Costa, 2015, On the temporal dynamics of sign production: An ERP study in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). Brain Research, 1609(1), 40-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2015.03.013; Gimeno-Martínez and Baus, 2022, Iconicity in sign language production: Task matters. Neuropsychologia, 167, 108166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108166) testing the influence of psycholinguistic variables and ERP mean amplitudes on signing and naming latencies. Deaf signers' signing latencies were influenced by sign iconicity in the picture signing task, and by spoken psycholinguistic variables in the word-to-sign translation task. Additionally, ERP amplitudes before response influenced signing but not translation latencies. Hearing signers' latencies, both signing and naming, were influenced by sign iconicity and word frequency, with early ERP amplitudes predicting only naming latencies. These findings highlight general and modality-specific determinants of lexical access in language production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive studies have been conducted on the impact of foreign language reading anxiety on reading, primarily focusing on pedagogy and behavior but lacking electrophysiological evidence. The current study aimed to investigate the influence of foreign language reading anxiety on reading and its underlying mechanisms. The results revealed a negative correlation between foreign language reading anxiety and foreign language reading performance, irrespective of the native language. Adults with low levels of foreign language reading anxiety (LFLRA) demonstrated a significant difference in early lexical component N170 amplitude between foreign and native languages. However, this effect was not observed in adults with high levels of foreign language reading anxiety (HFLRA). In terms of N170 latency, HFLRA showed a longer N170 for the foreign language compared to the native language. Furthermore, the N170 effects were predominantly localized over the left occipitotemporal electrodes. Regarding N400 latency, a significant difference was found in LFLRA individuals between foreign and native language processing, while HFLRA individuals did not exhibit this difference. These findings suggest that HFLRA individuals experience inefficient lexical processing (such as orthography or semantics) during reading in foreign language.

Classically, it is considered that semantic memory remains preserved in typical aging, although changes in lexical access or in more complex linguistic processing tasks, which require manipulation of several semantic features simultaneously, can be observed. Few studies investigate the semantic processing of verbs, especially in the Portuguese language. In this context, the present study investigates whether semantic features, especially the quantity of movement, influence the performance of young and elderly people in a task of semantic similarity judgment of verbs. For this purpose, 68 cognitively healthy individuals (aged 18 to 80 years), divided into 31 young individuals (20 women, mean age 28.25 years (SD=6.69)) and 37 elderly individuals (26 women, mean age 66 years (SD=5.39)), performed a semantic judgment task, based on pairs of verbs with and without semantic association between them, organized into blocks of low, medium, and high movement. A two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in reaction time (dependent variable) regarding age and quantity of movement, controlled by the independent variables: frequency, familiarity, and specificity. Our results indicate that the quantity of movement is the main variable influencing the semantic processing of verbs in this task, regardless of age. We also found that there is an increase in response time according to age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigated how correlations between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading depend on characteristics of the stimuli. RAN tasks using stimuli with high phonological demands were predicted to be the strongest correlates of decoding efficiency, while high semantic demands were predicted to lead to stronger correlations with comprehension. Method: At two time points, 132 Grade 2 children completed four different RAN versions, two using letter stimuli (low semantic load) and two using object stimuli (high semantic load). Both types of stimuli were used in either a repeated version, where a set of four items were repeated multiple times (low semantic load), or in a unique version, where each item appeared only once (high semantic load). Decoding efficiency and reading comprehension were assessed in Grade 5. Results: Analyses showed that confirmatory factor models with separate factors for each version provided better fit than grouping factors according to time point. Repetition (lowering semantic load) increased the longitudinal association between RAN objects and decoding efficiency. There was a tendency for conditions with higher semantic load to correlate more strongly with reading comprehension after control for decoding efficiency, but the differences were not significant. Conclusion: The results indicate that increasing semantic load weakens the relationship with decoding efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event‐related potential component: one that it reflects meaning‐based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strongly probabilistic, long‐distance dependency, ideal for the study of probabilistic processing. In sentences strongly constraining for a particular continuation, we show evidence that between two low‐probability words, only the word that changed the expected meaning of the sentence increased N400 amplitude, while a synonym of the most probable target word did not. The findings support an account of the N400 in which its underlying process is driven by the processing of meaning rather than of specific words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This eye tracking experiment tests how the brain recognizes and processes hybrid German-English word-formations and how this process compares to monolingual items. Thirty bilingual German-English adults from the Oxford area (23 females; mean age = 28.0, SD = 9.3) who were familiar with the meaning and underlying structure of the individual components had no comprehension difficulties. After fitting linear mixed effects models (95 % CI), the results showed an effect of word length and previous exposure to hybrid forms on processing times, indicated by longer fixation times and increased regressions, particularly in later stages of lexical processing. This indicates that bilingual readers have no trouble recognizing hybrid words, but may have difficulty with semantic and syntactic integration due to lack of exposure.

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical syndrome in which patients progressively lose speech and language abilities. Three variants are recognized: logopenic (lvPPA), associated with phonology and/or short-term verbal memory deficits accompanied by left temporo-parietal atrophy; semantic (svPPA), associated with semantic deficits and anterior temporal lobe (ATL) atrophy; non-fluent (nfvPPA) associated with grammar and/or speech-motor deficits and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) atrophy. Here, we set out to investigate whether the three variants of PPA can be dissociated based on error patterns in a single language task. We recruited 21 lvPPA, 28 svPPA, and 24 nfvPPA patients, together with 31 healthy controls, and analyzed their performance on an auditory noun-to-verb generation task, which requires auditory analysis of the input, access to and selection of relevant lexical and semantic knowledge, as well as preparation and execution of speech. Task accuracy differed across the three variants and controls, with lvPPA and nfvPPA having the lowest and highest accuracy, respectively. Critically, machine learning analysis of the different error types yielded above-chance classification of patients into their corresponding group. An analysis of the error types revealed clear variant-specific effects: lvPPA patients produced the highest percentage of "not-a-verb" responses and the highest number of semantically related nouns (production of baseball instead of throw to noun ball); in contrast, svPPA patients produced the highest percentage of "unrelated verb" responses and the highest number of light verbs (production of take instead of throw to noun ball). Taken together, our findings indicate that error patterns in an auditory verb generation task are associated with the breakdown of different neurocognitive mechanisms across PPA variants. Specifically, they corroborate the link between temporo-parietal regions with lexical processing, as well as ATL with semantic processes. These findings illustrate how the analysis of pattern of responses can help PPA phenotyping and heighten diagnostic sensitivity, while providing insights on the neural correlates of different components of language.

Cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics have historically been dominated by research conducted within Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, resulting in a disproportionate representation of this demographic in scholarly investigations. In this article, we report basic and applied research investigating order of constituents and morphological representation and processing conducted with speakers of Karajá, a non-european language of Central Brazil. The basic research findings contribute novel insights about the Karajá language, challenging certain purported language universals while corroborating others, thereby enriching the broader understanding of human cognition. The applied research explores methodological avenues to foreground indigenous voices and perspectives into the investigation process, acknowledging the potential drawbacks of employing WEIRD analytical categories when exploring non-WEIRD languages. We invite speakers of the language to the center of the discussion in metacognitive activities in which speakers use their insights to formulate hypotheses and create a theory for the grammar of the language. In line with the discussions in Maia (2022) in which eye tracking data was used at the Middle school and University levels, in these Karajá sessions, we also used qualitative eye tracking data as an aid to help Karajá language teachers to “go meta”, as put by Mahdavi (2014). We conclude by stressing that if we are to take seriously the importance of non-WEIRD science to the WEIRD world, there ought to be an increasing recentering of “participants” to more protagonist roles in research.

The present study aims at exploring lexical ambiguity resolution in bilingual children employing homonym meaning activation. Specifically, we are examining the processing of Greek homonyms in relation to the language input, verbal ability and cognitive capacity of 10–12 years old bilingual children raised in an immigrant context, in which Albanian is their heritage language and Greek is the majority language. We systematically assessed sentence context effects in homonym meaning activation using a cross-modal priming task. Primes were sentences biasing towards the dominant, subordinate, or neither meaning of a sentence-final homonym while visual targets were related to either meaning of the homonym. To measure the bilingual language experience and address variability issues in the dataset, we administered a background questionnaire that focused on acquisition history, bi-literacy practices and self-reported competence in each language along with a standardized test for verbal ability in Greek. The study's findings show that frequency and context are significant parameters in the examination of ambiguity resolution and underline the contribution of verbal working memory to lexical processing. Additionally, our results highlight the role of the bilingual language experience in the function of the mental lexicon and the potential benefits of bi-literacy development.

This study investigates the impact of study-abroad experience (SAE) on lexical translation among 50 Chinese (L1)-English (L2) interpreting students. Participants were divided into two groups based on their experience abroad. Both groups consisted of 25 unbalanced L2 learners who were matched in age, working memory, length of interpreting training, and L2 proficiency. Bidirectional word translation recognition tasks, from L1 to L2 and L2 to L1, highlighted several key findings: (1) both groups were significantly more accurate and faster from L2 to L1 than in the reverse direction; (2) the study abroad (SA) group was more inclined to respond quickly at the risk of making errors, whereas the non-study abroad (NSA) group tended to be more cautious, prioritising accuracy over speed; (3) the SA group were more balanced and consistent in their performance across lexical translations in both directions than the NSA group. These results emphasise the potent effect of SAE in resolving bilinguals' language competition, especially in streamlining language switching, a cognitive process critical for interpreting students engaging daily with dual languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: The benefits of dual-language immersion (DLI) versus English-only classrooms for minority-language speakers' acquisition of English have been well documented. However, less is known about the effect(s) of DLI on majority-language speakers' native English skills. Prior studies largely used accuracy-focused measures to index children's language skills; it is possible that processing-based tasks are more sensitive to the effects of DLI experience. Methodology: Thirty-three monolingual native English-speaking children attending English-only classrooms and thirty-three English-speaking children attending English-Spanish DLI matched in age, gender, nonverbal IQ, and socio-economic status were tested twice, 1 year apart, on standardized and processing-based measures of English vocabulary and morphosyntax. Analysis: We ran linear mixed-effects models to examine the extent to which group and time would predict scores on knowledge-based measures of vocabulary and morphosyntactic knowledge, as well as accuracy and reaction times on processing-based measures of English vocabulary and morphosyntax. Findings: Results revealed comparable levels of growth in English for both groups. A subtle effect of DLI was observed on a lexical-decision task: bilinguals were slower in Year 1 but both groups were equally efficient in Year 2. These results indicate that DLI programs have minimal impact on majority-language speakers' native-language skills in the age-range tested. Originality: This study is the first to longitudinally examine processing-based native language outcomes in bilingual children in DLI classrooms. Significance: We do not find evidence that DLI exposure carries a cost to native language development, even when indexed by processing measures. This should reassure parents, educators, and policymakers in that there are no downsides to DLI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the potential effects of high-frequency (10 Hz) repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) of the bilateral Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) (30-sessions; 2-sessions/day) on improving lexical processing in one participant with mild – Alzheimer's disease (hereafter dementia of the Alzheimer type-DAT). Increased accuracy and faster reaction times (RTs) were reported in a lexical-decision task (LDT) up to 2-months post-intervention. The current findings indicate that high-frequency stimulation of the DLPFC might be a potential therapeutic tool to improve lexical processing in mild-DAT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although several studies initially supported the proposal by Nespor et al. (Nespor, Marina, Marcela Peña & Jacques Mehler. 2003. On the different roles of vowels and consonants in speech processing and language acquisition. Lingue e Linguaggio 2. 221–247) that consonants are more informative than vowels in lexical processing, a more complex picture has emerged from recent research. Current evidence suggests that infants initially show a vowel bias in lexical processing and later transition to a consonant bias, possibly depending on the characteristics of the ambient language. Danish infants have shown a vowel bias in word learning at 20 months—an age at which infants learning French or Italian no longer show a vowel bias but rather a consonant bias, and infants learning English show no bias. The present study tested whether Danish 20-month-olds also have a vowel bias when recognizing familiar words. Specifically, using the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm, we tested whether Danish infants were more likely to ignore or accept consonant than vowel mispronunciations when matching familiar words with pictures. The infants successfully matched correctly pronounced familiar words with pictures but showed no vowel or consonant bias when matching mispronounced words with pictures. The lack of a bias for Danish vowels or consonants in familiar word recognition adds to evidence that lexical processing biases are language-specific and may additionally depend on developmental age and perhaps task difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that information processing differences associated with autism could impact on language and literacy development. This study tested an approach to autistic cognition that suggests learning occurs via prediction errors, and autistic people have very precise and inflexible predictions that result in more sensitivity to meaningless signal errors than non‐autistic readers. We used this theoretical background to investigate whether differences in prediction coding influence how orthographic (Experiment 1) and semantic information (Experiment 2) is processed by autistic readers. Experiment 1 used a lexical decision task to test whether letter position information was processed less flexibly by autistic than non‐autistic readers. Three types of letter strings: words, transposed letter and substituted letters nonwords were presented. Experiment 2 used a semantic relatedness task to test whether autistic readers processed words with high and low semantic diversity differently to non‐autistic readers. Results showed similar transposed letter and semantic diversity effects for all readers; indicating that orthographic and semantic information are processed similarly by autistic and non‐autistic readers; and therefore, differences in prediction coding were not evident for these lexical processing tasks. Lay Summary: Many autistic people experience difficulties with reading. This study examined whether this might be related to how autistic people process words. Specifically, this research examined whether autistic adults process how letters are positioned and the meaning of words differently to non‐autistic people. No differences in word processing were found between autistic and non‐autistic people. This suggests that if an autistic adult does experience reading difficulties, it is unlikely to be related to differences in word processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech perception performance for degraded speech can improve with practice or exposure. Such perceptual learning is thought to be reliant on attention and theoretical accounts like the predictive coding framework suggest a key role for attention in supporting learning. However, it is unclear whether speech perceptual learning requires undivided attention. We evaluated the role of divided attention in speech perceptual learning in two online experiments (N = 336). Experiment 1 tested the reliance of perceptual learning on undivided attention. Participants completed a speech recognition task where they repeated forty noise-vocoded sentences in a between-group design. Participants performed the speech task alone or concurrently with a domain-general visual task (dual task) at one of three difficulty levels. We observed perceptual learning under divided attention for all four groups, moderated by dual-task difficulty. Listeners in easy and intermediate visual conditions improved as much as the single-task group. Those who completed the most challenging visual task showed faster learning and achieved similar ending performance compared to the single-task group. Experiment 2 tested whether learning relies on domain-specific or domain-general processes. Participants completed a single speech task or performed this task together with a dual task aiming to recruit domain-specific (lexical or phonological), or domain-general (visual) processes. All secondary task conditions produced patterns and amount of learning comparable to the single speech task. Our results demonstrate that the impact of divided attention on perceptual learning is not strictly dependent on domain-general or domain-specific processes and speech perceptual learning persists under divided attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential affective processing has been widely documented for bilinguals: L1 affective words elicit higher levels of arousal and stronger emotionality ratings than L2 affective words (Pavlenko, 2012). In this study, we focus on two closely related Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, whose affective lexicons are highly overlapping, with shared lexical items that only differ in pronunciation across languages. We recorded L1 Cantonese – L2 Mandarin bilinguals' pupil responses to auditory tokens of Cantonese and Mandarin affective words. Our results showed that Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals had stronger pupil responses when the affective words were pronounced in Cantonese (L1) than when the same words were pronounced in Mandarin (L2). The effect was most evident in taboo words and among bilinguals with lower L2 proficiency. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings in the frameworks of exemplar theory and models of the bilingual lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to rapidly recognize words and link them to referents is central to children's early language development. This ability, often called word recognition in the developmental literature, is typically studied in the looking-while-listening paradigm, which measures infants' fixation on a target object (vs. a distractor) after hearing a target label. We present a large-scale, open database of infant and toddler eye-tracking data from looking-while-listening tasks. The goal of this effort is to address theoretical and methodological challenges in measuring vocabulary development. We first present how we created the database, its features and structure, and associated tools for processing and accessing infant eye-tracking datasets. Using these tools, we then work through two illustrative examples to show how researchers can use Peekbank to interrogate theoretical and methodological questions about children's developing word recognition ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are multiple levels of processing relevant to reading that vary in their visual, sublexical, and lexical orthographic processing demands. Segregating distinct cortical sources for each of these levels has been challenging in EEG studies of early readers. To address this challenge, we applied recent advances in analyzing high‐density EEG using Steady‐State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) via data‐driven Reliable Components Analysis (RCA) in a group of early readers spanning from kindergarten to second grade. Three controlled stimulus contrasts—familiar words versus unfamiliar pseudofonts, familiar words versus pseudowords, and pseudowords versus nonwords—were used to isolate coarse print tuning, lexical processing, and sublexical orthography‐related processing, respectively. First, three overlapping yet distinct neural sources—left vOT, dorsal parietal, and primary visual cortex were revealed underlying coarse print tuning. Second, we segregated distinct cortical sources for the other two levels of processing: lexical fine tuning over occipito‐temporal/parietal regions; sublexical orthographic fine tuning over left occipital regions. Finally, exploratory group analyses based on children's reading fluency suggested that coarse print tuning emerges early even in children with limited reading knowledge, while sublexical and higher‐level lexical processing emerge only in children with sufficient reading knowledge. Research Highlights: Cognitive processes underlying coarse print tuning, sublexical, and lexical fine tuning were examined in beginning readers.Three overlapping yet distinct neural sources—left ventral occipito‐temporal (vOT), left temporo‐parietal, and primary visual cortex—were revealed underlying coarse print tuning.Responses to sublexical orthographic fine tuning were found over left occipital regions, while responses to higher‐level linguistic fine tuning were found over occipito‐temporal/parietal regions.Exploratory group analyses suggested that coarse print tuning emerges in children with limited reading knowledge, while sublexical and higher‐level linguistic fine tuning effects emerge in children with sufficient reading knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classic psycholinguistics seeks universal language mechanisms for all people, emphasizing the "modal" listener: hearing, neurotypical, monolingual, and young adults. Applied psycholinguistics then characterizes differences in terms of their deviation from the modal. This mirrors naturalist philosophies of health which presume a normal function, with illness as a deviation. In contrast, normative positions argue that illness is partially culturally derived. It occurs when a person cannot meet socio-culturally defined goals, separating differences in biology (disease) from socio-cultural function (illness). We synthesize this with mechanistic functionalist views in which language emerges from diverse lower-level mechanisms with no one-to-one mapping to function (termed the functional mechanistic normative approach). This challenges primarily psychometric approaches—which are culturally defined—suggesting a process-based approach may yield more insight. We illustrate this with work on word recognition across multiple domains: cochlear implant users, children, language disorders, L2 learners, and aging. This work investigates each group's solutions to the problem of word recognition as interesting in its own right. Variation in the process is value-neutral, and psychometric measures complement this, reflecting fit with cultural expectations (disease vs. illness). By examining variation in processing across people with a variety of skills and goals, we arrive at deeper insight into fundamental principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult learners acquire second language (L2) allophones with experience. We examine two mechanisms which may support the acquisition of allophonic variants in second language acquisition. One of the mechanisms is based on the distribution of phones with respect to their phonological context (i.e. phonological distribution). The other is based on the role the phones play in contrasting words (i.e. lexical contrast). Experiment 1 established adult native English speakers' baseline sensitivity to the novel [b]–[β] auditory contrast. In Experiment 2 we examined whether adult native English speakers infer the phonological status of [b] and [β] in an artificial language based only on their distributions to phonological contexts. We observed no evidence that these participants were able to do so. In Experiment 3 we investigated whether learners infer the phonological status of [b] and [β] from the role they play in lexical contrast and observed both perceptual and lexical processing evidence to suggest that adults may use meaning-based cues to the lack of contrast to learn that two phones are allophones of the same phoneme. Together our findings suggest that adult L2 learners may prioritize information about function (in this case, lexical contrast) over the phonological distribution of phones as they determine the phonological status of L2 sounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand the development of automatization in second language (L2) acquisition and its role in speaking fluency development, 39 English as foreign language (EFL) learners performed a speaking task (subsequently analyzed for utterance fluency) as well as semantic classification (lexical processing measure) and maze (grammar processing measure) tasks at two time points (Time 1 and Time 2) over six months. The findings indicate that learners significantly speeded up their lexical and grammar processing, as reflected in faster reaction time (RT). However, only lexical processing showed a propensity for more stable processing at Time 1, as indicated by coefficient of variance (CV). Furthermore, multiple regression analyses revealed that more automatized grammar processing (faster RT and smaller CV) at Time 1 significantly predicted a larger reduction in mid-clause pause duration and frequency, respectively. These findings underscore the importance of automatization in grammar processing for developing fluency in an EFL context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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To understand language, we need to recognize words and combine them into phrases and sentences. During this process, responses to the words themselves are changed. In a step toward understanding how the brain builds sentence structure, the present study concerns the neural readout of this adaptation. We ask whether low-frequency neural readouts associated with words change as a function of being in a sentence. To this end, we analyzed an MEG dataset by Schoffelen et al. (2019) of 102 human participants (51 women) listening to sentences and word lists, the latter lacking any syntactic structure and combinatorial meaning. Using temporal response functions and a cumulative model-fitting approach, we disentangled delta- and theta-band responses to lexical information (word frequency), from responses to sensory and distributional variables. The results suggest that delta-band responses to words are affected by sentence context in time and space, over and above entropy and surprisal. In both conditions, the word frequency response spanned left temporal and posterior frontal areas; however, the response appeared later in word lists than in sentences. In addition, sentence context determined whether inferior frontal areas were responsive to lexical information. In the theta band, the amplitude was larger in the word list condition; 100 milliseconds in right frontal areas. We conclude that low-frequency responses to words are changed by sentential context. The results of this study show how the neural representation of words is affected by structural context and as such provide insight into how the brain instantiates compositionality in language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory study examined the simultaneous interactions and relative contributions of bottom-up social information (regional dialect, speaking style), top-down contextual information (semantic predictability), and the internal dynamics of the lexicon (neighborhood density, lexical frequency) to lexical access and word recognition. Cross-modal matching and intelligibility in noise tasks were conducted with a community sample of adults at a local science museum. Each task featured one condition in which keywords were presented in isolation and one condition in which they were presented within a multiword phrase. Lexical processing was slower and more accurate when keywords were presented in their phrasal context, and was both faster and more accurate for auditory stimuli produced in the local Midland dialect. In both tasks, interactions were observed among stimulus dialect, speaking style, semantic predictability, phonological neighborhood density, and lexical frequency. These interactions revealed that bottom-up social information and top-down contextual information contribute more to speech processing than the internal dynamics of the lexicon. Moreover, the relatively stronger bottom-up social effects were observed in both the isolated word and multiword phrase conditions, suggesting that social variation is central to speech processing, even in non-interactive laboratory tasks. At the same time, the specific interactions observed differed between the two experiments, reflecting task-specific demands related to processing time constraints and signal degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: This longitudinal study investigated associations between language environment and parent‐infant close contact in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and preterm children's lexical abilities. Methods: NICU language environment of 43 very preterm infants (born<32 gestational weeks) was measured with the Language Environment Analysis System (LENA; variables: number of adult words, conversational turns, and child vocalisations). Parent‐infant close contact (holding and skin‐to‐skin contact) in the NICU was reported using parental closeness diaries. At 15 and 18 months' corrected age, lexical development was measured with screening methods, and eye tracking‐based lexical processing was assessed at 18 months. N varied between 29 and 38 in different outcome measures. Results: LENA measured conversational turns and child vocalisations, and parent‐infant close contact associated positively with lexical development (r = 0.35–0.57). High numbers of NICU adult words associated negatively with lexical processing (r = −0.38– −0.40). In regression models, conversational turns and parent‐infant close contact explained 34%–35% of receptive development. Conclusion: Findings suggest that adult‐infant turn taking and parent‐infant close contact in the NICU are positively associated with lexical development. High numbers of overheard words in the NICU may not favour later lexical processing. Further research is warranted on the significance of NICU language environment on later lexical abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has shown that adults can access multiplemeanings for a word, but little work has examined howchildren process multiple meanings. We tested 48 4- to 7-year-old children and 48 adults in a touchscreen picturerecognition task. Two meanings of the same word weredisplayed on successive trials, which varied according towhether the 2 meanings were unrelated (homonyms), related(polysemes), or repeated (same-meaning). Adults identifiedthe second meaning more quickly than the first in allconditions and to the same extent. Children, however,identified the second meaning more quickly only onpolysemy and same-meaning trials. This difference suggeststhat children are less capable of co-activating unrelatedmeanings, which raises the possibility that children mustlearn to do so over development. Despite the ubiquity ofpolysemy in language, our work is the first to show thatchildren’s processing of word representations is organizedby similarity.

High-Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) has been shown tobe effective in improving the perception of even the hardestsecond-language (L2) contrasts. However, little is known as towhether such training can improve phonological processing atthe lexical level. The present study tested whether this type oftraining also improves word recognition. Adult proficientFrench late learners of English completed eight online sessionsof HVPT on the perception of English word-initial /h/. Thissound does not exist in French and has been shown to bedifficult to process by French listeners both on the prelexical(Mah, Goad & Steinhauer, 2016) and the lexical level (Melnik& Peperkamp, 2019). In pretest and posttest participantscompleted an identification task as well as a lexical decisiontask. The results demonstrated that after training the learners’accuracy had improved in both tasks. The theoretical andapplied implications are discussed.

Logographic language and alphabetic language differ significantly in orthography. Investigating the commonality and particularity of visual word recognition between the two distinct writing systems is informative for understating the neural mechanisms underlying visual word recognition. In the present study, we compared the chronometry of early lexical processing and the brain regions involved in early lexical processing between Chinese (logographic language) and Mongolian (alphabetic language) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) using both implicit and explicit reading tasks. Familiar Chinese one-character words (lexical) and unknown Chinese one-character words (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Chinese readers in Experiment 1. Mongolian words (lexical) and pseudowords (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Mongolian readers in Experiment 2. In the color decision task, participants were asked to decide the color (black or blue) of each stimulus. In the lexical recognition task, participants were asked to report whether they could recognize each stimulus. The results showed that in both experiments and both tasks, ERPs to lexical items differed significantly from those to non-lexical items in the parietooccipital scalp region approximately 250 ms after stimulus onset, reflecting the early lexical processing, which likely originated from the ventral occipitotemporal cortex as revealed by source analysis. These results indicated that although Chinese and Mongolian differed markedly in orthographic features, the neural mechanisms underlying early lexical processing are similar between the two languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past tense inflection has been a popular phenomenon to study the representational status of morphologically complex words. While several experiments in the processing of past tense verbs across languages have shown these verbs are stored via their constituent morphemes, experiments in the processing of the Dutch past tense indicate that these words are lexically stored in their surface form and therefore not decomposed. However, the experiments in Dutch past tense processing have not made use of experimental paradigms that can tap the earliest stages of word processing, where some theories predict decomposition would take place. We used the mismatch negativity response to study the representational status of monomorphemic and morphologically complex Dutch words. We were able to obtain different responses for monomorphemic and morphologically complex words, suggesting these are processed by different mechanisms. We cannot, however, discard the possibility that some past tense forms in Dutch do have surface form representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech perception performance for degraded speech can improve with practice or exposure. Such perceptual learning is thought to be reliant on attention and theoretical accounts like the predictive coding framework suggest a key role for attention in supporting learning. However, it is unclear whether speech perceptual learning requires undivided attention. We evaluated the role of divided attention in speech perceptual learning in two online experiments (N=336). Experiment 1 tested the reliance of perceptual learning on undivided attention. Participants completed a speech recognition task where they repeated forty noise-vocoded sentences in a between-group design. Participants performed the speech task alone or concurrently with a domain-general visual task (dual task) at one of three difficulty levels. We observed perceptual learning under divided attention for all four groups, moderated by dual-task difficulty. Listeners in easy and intermediate visual conditions improved as much as the single-task group. Those who completed the most challenging visual task showed faster learning and achieved similar ending performance compared to the single-task group. Experiment 2 tested whether learning relies on domain-specific or domain-general processes. Participants completed a single speech task or performed this task together with a dual task aiming to recruit domain-specific (lexical or phonological), or domain-general (visual) processes. All secondary task conditions produced patterns and amount of learning comparable to the single speech task. Our results demonstrate that the impact of divided attention on perceptual learning is not strictly dependent on domain-general or domain-specific processes and speech perceptual learning persists under divided attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effects of sentence contexts on the second language (L2) word recognition process. It aims at finding whether second language (L2) learners of English perform similar to English native speakers in terms of using the sentence context to predict upcoming word in their L2. A group of L2 participants and a control group of native speakers (L1) participants performed a cross-modal priming task in which they were asked to make a lexical decision on a visually presented word while listening to a semantically related or non- related English sentence. The test was conducted to determine whether both groups of participants were able to predict an upcoming word based on the context of the preceding sentence that is auditorily presented. The study is conducted using PsychoPy software whereas the data was analyzed using linear-mixed effects modeling in RStudio software. The results showed that the L1 speakers were able to predict an upcoming word based on the context of the preceding sentence. That is, a significantly faster recognition of the related word was observed compared to the less related words. On other hand, the English second language participants were not as able to predict an upcoming word as quickly as the English native speaker participants were. However, the L2 participants showed post-access lexical processing or what is called an integrating process of the presented word to the previous sentence context. That is, an effect of the sentence context was observed with L2 participants, yet only after reading the presented word, they decide whether it is appropriate to the preceding sentence context or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensorimotor information is vital to the conceptual representation of our knowledge system. This study collects perceptual and action ratings for 664 disyllabic nouns among 438 native speakers and creates the first and largest dataset of sensorimotor norms for nouns in Chinese. Using aggregated semantic covariates, including concreteness ratings from a concreteness rating study, as well as the reaction times and error rates from a lexical decision study, our current work demonstrates the strengths of sensory modalities and action effectors in Chinese nouns and explores the contributions of embodied experiences in reflecting orthographic representations and semantic processing in the Chinese language. This study contributes valuable data sources to the study of Chinese lexical processing and highlights the importance of sensorimotor information and embodied manifestations in the semantic representations of concepts. Our results also support the language universal that orthographic awareness in lexical processing and reading supersedes phonological awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to investigate the coordination of source text comprehension and translation in a sight translation task. The study also sought to determine whether translation strategies influence sight translation performance. Two groups of conference interpreters—professionals and trainees—sight translated English sentences into Polish while their eye movements and performance were monitored. Translation demands were manipulated by the use of either high- or low-frequency critical words in the sentences. Translation experience had no effect on first-pass viewing durations, but experts used shorter re-view durations than trainees (especially in the low-frequency condition). Professionals translated more accurately and with less pausing than trainees. Translation in the high-frequency condition was more accurate and had shorter pauses than in the low-frequency condition. Critical word translation accuracy increased with the translation onset latency (TOL) for individual sentences, and pause durations were relatively short when TOLs were either relatively short or long. Together, these findings indicate that, in sight translation, the initial phase of normal reading for comprehension is followed by phases in which reading and translation co-occur, and that translation strategy and translation performance are linked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans can understand thousands of abstract words, even when they do not have clearly perceivable referents. Recent views highlight an important role of social experience in grounding of abstract concepts and sub-kinds of abstract concepts, but empirical work in this area is still in its early stages. In the present study, a picture-word semantic priming paradigm was employed to investigate the contribution effect of social experience that is provided by real-life pictures to social abstract (SA, e.g., friendship, betrayal) concepts and emotional abstract (EA, e.g., happiness, anger) concepts. Using a lexical decision task, we examined responses to picture-SA word pairs (Experiment 1) and picture-EA word pairs (Experiment 2) in social/emotional semantically related and unrelated conditions. All pairs shared either positive or negative valence. The results showed quicker responses to positive SA and EA words that were preceded by related vs. unrelated prime pictures. Specifically, positive SA words were facilitated by the corresponding social scene pictures, whereas positive EA words were facilitated by pictures depict the corresponding facial expressions and gestures. However, such facilitatory effect was not observed in negative picture-SA/EA word conditions. This pattern of results suggests that a facilitatory effect of social experience on abstract concepts varies with different sub-kinds of abstract concepts, that seems to be limited to positive SA concepts. Overall, our findings confirm the crucial role of social experience for abstract concepts and further suggest that not all abstract concepts can benefit from social experience, at least in the semantic priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading a word requires several component processes. The dual route cascaded (DRC) model provides a characterization of these component processes and their involvement in different reading routes. We tested how relevant precursor skills associated with these component processes predict the use of the sublexical and lexical route in beginning readers of a transparent orthography. More than 100 German first graders performed a battery of tasks tapping into precursor skills associated with the DRC components. Using factor analysis, we first verified that the tasks can be attributed to three sets of skills, capturing visual, sublexical, and lexico-semantic components, as the DRC suggests. We then used these sets of skills to predict differences in the reliance on sublexical and lexical reading in second grade as indicated by length and frequency effects. Results show that the set of sublexical skills in first grade especially predicts differences in the recognition of long frequent words at the end of second grade, whereas the set of lexico-semantic skills predicts differences in the reading of long infrequent words. The findings corroborate the attribution of specific precursor skills to the sublexical and lexical route and reveal their distinct impact on sublexical and lexical reading in beginning readers. The work thus empirically informs the developmental version of the DRC, especially regarding variability in trajectories of reading acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]