Simulating syllable frequency effects within an interactive activation framework

The role of valence and arousal for phonological iconicity in the lexicon of German: a cross-validation study using pseudoword ratings

The notion of sound symbolism receives increasing interest in psycholinguistics. Recent research - including empirical effects of affective phonological iconicity on language processing (Adelman et al., 2018; Conrad et al., 2022) - suggested language codes affective meaning at a basic phonological level using specific phonemes as sublexical markers of emotion. Here, in a series of 8 rating-experiments, we investigate the sensitivity of language users to assumed affectively-iconic systematic distribution patterns of phonemes across the German vocabulary:After computing sublexical-affective-values (SAV) concerning valence and arousal for the entire German phoneme inventory according to occurrences of syllabic onsets, nuclei and codas in a large-scale affective normative lexical database, we constructed pseudoword material differing in SAV to test for subjective affective impressions.Results support affective iconicity as affective ratings mirrored sound-to-meaning correspondences in the lexical database. Varying SAV of otherwise semantically meaningless pseudowords altered affective impressions: Higher arousal was consistently assigned to pseudowords made of syllabic constituents more often used in high-arousal words - contrasted by less straightforward effects of valence SAV. Further disentangling specific differential effects of the two highly-related affective dimensions valence and arousal, our data clearly suggest arousal, rather than valence, as the relevant dimension driving affective iconicity effects.

The role of syllables and morphemes in silent reading: An eye-tracking study

German skilled readers have been found to engage in morphological and syllable-based processing in visual word recognition. However, the relative reliance on syllables and morphemes in reading multi-syllabic complex words is still unresolved. This study aimed to unveil which of these sublexical units are the preferred units of reading by employing eye-tracking technology. Participants silently read sentences while their eye-movements were recorded. Words were visually marked using colour alternation (Experiment 1) or hyphenation (Experiment 2)-at syllable boundary (e.g., Kir-schen), at morpheme boundary (e.g., Kirsch-en), or within the units themselves (e.g., Ki-rschen). A control condition without disruptions was used as a baseline (e.g., Kirschen). The results of Experiment 1 showed that eye-movements were not modulated by colour alternations. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that hyphens disrupting syllables had a larger inhibitory effect on reading times than hyphens disrupting morphemes, suggesting that eye-movements in German skilled readers are more influenced by syllabic than morphological structure.

Does adding an accent mark hinder lexical access? Evidence from Spanish

Recent research has shown that omitting the accent mark in a Spanish word, which is a language in which these diacritics only indicate lexical stress, does not cause a delay in lexical access (e.g., cárcel [prison] ≈ carcel; cárcel-CÁRCEL ≈ carcel-CÁRCEL). This pattern has been interpreted as accented and nonaccented vowels sharing the abstract letter representations in Spanish. However, adding an accent mark to a nonaccented Spanish word appears to produce a reading cost in masked priming paradigms (e.g., féliz-FELIZ [happy] > feliz-FELIZ). We examined whether adding an accent mark to a non accented Spanish word slows down lexical access in two semantic categorization experiments to solve this puzzle. We added an accent mark either on the stressed syllable (Experiment 1, e.g., cébra for the word cebra [zebra]) or an unstressed syllable (Experiment 2, e.g., cebrá). While effect sizes were small in magnitude, adding an accent mark produced a cost relative to the intact words, especially when the accent mark was added on an unstressed syllable (cebrá > cebra). These findings favor the view that letter identity and (to a lesser extent) accent mark information are encoded during word recognition in Spanish. We also examined the practical implications of these results.

On the syllable structure effect in European Portuguese: Evidence from ERPs

Syllable effects during visual word recognition have been observed for CV but not for CVC syllables, a puzzling effect that is not explained either by the distributional frequencies of CV and CVC syllables, syllable complexity, or syllabic neighbourhood density. Furthermore, in European Portuguese (EP), syllable effects have not been found for pseudowords, suggesting that syllable activation might not precede lexical activation. Here, we combined a colour-congruency lexical decision task with the collection of electroencephalographic (EEG) data to investigate syllable effects in EP for CV and CVC words and pseudowords, with the latter presenting a match (CVC_O+P+) or a mismatch (CVC_O+P-) between their orthographic (O) and phonological (P) syllable structure to further ascertain the locus (i.e., orthographic and/or phonological) of syllable effects. Results showed syllable congruency effects in the N100, P200, and N400 ERP components for CV and CVC words suggesting the influence of different factors underlying the syllable structure effect.

The Omission of Accent Marks Does Not Hinder Word Recognition: Evidence From Spanish

Recent research has found that the omission of accent marks in Spanish does not produce slower word identification times in go/no-go lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks [e.g., cárcel (prison) = carcel], thus suggesting that vowels like á and a are represented by the same orthographic units during word recognition and reading. However, there is a discrepant finding with the yes/no lexical decision task, where the words with the omitted accent mark produced longer response times than the words with the accent mark. In Experiment 1, we examined this discrepant finding by running a yes/no lexical decision experiment comparing the effects for words and non-words. Results showed slower response times for the words with omitted accent mark than for those with the accent mark present (e.g., cárcel < carcel). Critically, we found the opposite pattern for non-words: response times were longer for the non-words with accent marks (e.g., cárdil > cardil), thus suggesting a bias toward a “word” response for accented items in the yes/no lexical decision task. To test this interpretation, Experiment 2 used the same stimuli with a blocked design (i.e., accent mark present vs. omitted in all items) and a go/no-go lexical decision task (i.e., respond only to “words”). Results showed similar response times to words regardless of whether the accent mark was omitted (e.g., cárcel = carcel). This pattern strongly suggests that the longer response times to words with an omitted accent mark in yes/no lexical decision experiments are a task-dependent effect rather than a genuine reading cost.

Syllable effects in beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese readers: Evidence from a sandwich masked go/no-go lexical decision task

Reading is one of the most important milestones a child achieves throughout development. Above the letter level, the syllable has been shown to play a relevant role at early stages of visual word recognition in adult skilled readers. However, studies aiming to examine when, during reading acquisition, the syllable emerges as a functional sublexical unit are scarce, and the studies conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. In this work, beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese (EP) developing readers performed a sandwich masked lexical decision task in which CV (e.g., RU.MOR[rumour]) and CVC (e.g., CIS.NE[swan]) first-syllable EP words were preceded either by syllable congruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, cis.ra-CIS.NE), syllable incongruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, ci.ser-CIS.NE), unrelated (e.g., va.cra-RU.MOR, zar.vo-CIS.NE) pseudowords primes, or identity (e.g., ru.mour-RU.MOUR, cis.ne-CIS.NE) primes. Results showed reliable syllable effects only for intermediate readers and for CV and CVC words alike. Findings are discussed attending to current models of visual word recognition.

Frequency-tagged visual evoked responses track syllable effects in visual word recognition

The processing of syllables in visual word recognition was investigated using a novel paradigm based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). French words were presented to proficient readers in a delayed naming task. Words were split into two segments, the first of which was flickered at 18.75 Hz and the second at 25 Hz. The first segment either matched (congruent condition) or did not match (incongruent condition) the first syllable. The SSVEP responses in the congruent condition showed increased power compared to the responses in the incongruent condition, providing new evidence that syllables are important sublexical units in visual word recognition and reading aloud. With respect to the neural correlates of the effect, syllables elicited an early activation of a right hemisphere network. This network is typically associated with the programming of complex motor sequences, cognitive control and timing. Subsequently, responses were obtained in left hemisphere areas related to phonological processing.

Syllabic parsing in children: a developmental study using visual word-spotting in Spanish

Some inconsistency is observed in the results from studies of reading development regarding the role of the syllable in visual word recognition, perhaps due to a disparity between the tasks used. We adopted a word-spotting paradigm, with Spanish children of second grade (mean age: 7 years) and sixth grade (mean age: 11 years). The children were asked to detect one-syllable words that could be found at the beginning of pseudo-words, with the boundary between the word and the remaining letters being manipulated. The end of the embedded word could either match the syllabic boundary (e.g. the word FIN in the pseudo-word FINLO, where the syllable boundary is between N and L) or not (e.g. FINUS, where the syllable boundary is located between I and N). The results showed that children of both grades were faster in the syllabic than the non-syllabic condition, and that the magnitude of this effect was the same regardless of reading ability. The results suggest an early universality in the use of syllables in Spanish, regardless of reading level.

Probabilistic orthographic cues to grammatical category in the brain

What helps us determine whether a word is a noun or a verb, without conscious awareness? We report on cues in the way individual English words are spelled, and, for the first time, identify their neural correlates via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We used a lexical decision task with trisyllabic nouns and verbs containing orthographic cues that are either consistent or inconsistent with the spelling patterns of words from that grammatical category. Significant linear increases in response times and error rates were observed as orthography became less consistent, paralleled by significant linear decreases in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal in the left supramarginal gyrus of the left inferior parietal lobule, a brain region implicated in visual word recognition. A similar pattern was observed in the left superior parietal lobule. These findings align with an emergentist view of grammatical category processing which results from sensitivity to multiple probabilistic cues.