An orthographic prediction error as the basis for efficient visual word recognition

Gagl, Benjamin; Sassenhagen, Jona; Haan, Sophia; Gregorova, Klara; Richlan, Fabio; Fiebach, Christian J.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116727

Cited by 28 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Meanwhile, FWs induced more activation in the posterior part of the left FG, while SCs elicited more activation in the left middle occipital gyrus. These findings support the prediction error hypothesis, which means that when a stimulus is recognized as potentially meaningful but is not predicted by its visual word form efficiently, it may elicit increased brain activity ( Price and Devlin, 2011 ; J Zhao et al, 2019 ; Gagl et al, 2020 ). In line with previous findings in alphabetic languages, the varied activation patterns also revealed the corresponding relationship between functional gradient of the left FG and similarity to RWs, indicating the attuning to orthographic regularities of the reader’s language in the course of learning to read ( Vinckier et al, 2007 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Functional Gradient of the Fusiform Cortex for Chinese Character Recognition

Guo

Geng

Cao

et al. 2022

eNeuro

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Visual word recognition has been proposed to have a functional and spatial organization corresponding to hierarchical language-like word forms in the left fusiform gyrus (FG) during visual word recognition in alphabetic languages. However, it is still unclear whether the similar functional gradients of word-like representation exist during Chinese character recognition. In this study, we adopted univariate activation analysis and representational similarity analysis (RSA) methods to investigate the functional organization in the FG for Chinese character recognition using task fMRI data. Native Chinese readers were visually presented with four types of character-like stimuli (i.e., real characters, pseudo-characters, false characters, and stroke combinations). After analysis, we observed a posterior-to-anterior functional gradient in the left FG corresponding to the degree of likeness of stimuli to character. Additionally, distinct subregions of the left FG harbor different orthographic codes. The middle part of the left FG was involved in abstract orthographic processing, while the anterior part of the left FG was involved in lexical orthographic processing (i.e., mapping orthography onto phonology or semantics). Notably, for the right FG, we did not find similar coding pattern for selectivity to character likeness, indicating the asymmetry of the functional hierarchical organization in favor of the left hemisphere. In conclusion, our findings revealed that the left FG presents a posterior-to-anterior gradient functional processing for Chinese character recognition, which expands our understanding of the psychological, neural, and computational theories of word reading.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Functional Gradient of the Fusiform Cortex for Chinese Character Recognition

Guo

Geng

Cao

et al. 2022

eNeuro

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“…Neither language‐specific (Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2016) nor general theories of predictive coding (Friston, 2005) have discussed restrictions of predictive processing to certain levels of representation to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this possibility should be explored further in future studies (see Gagl et al., 2020, for a recent example from pre‐lexical orthographic processing).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictive pre‐activation of orthographic and lexical‐semantic representations facilitates visual word recognition

2021

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To a crucial extent, the efficiency of reading results from the fact that visual word recognition is faster in predictive contexts. Predictive coding models suggest that this facilitation results from pre‐activation of predictable stimulus features across multiple representational levels before stimulus onset. Still, it is not sufficiently understood which aspects of the rich set of linguistic representations that are activated during reading—visual, orthographic, phonological, and/or lexical‐semantic—contribute to context‐dependent facilitation. To investigate in detail which linguistic representations are pre‐activated in a predictive context and how they affect subsequent stimulus processing, we combined a well‐controlled repetition priming paradigm, including words and pseudowords (i.e., pronounceable nonwords), with behavioral and magnetoencephalography measurements. For statistical analysis, we used linear mixed modeling, which we found had a higher statistical power compared to conventional multivariate pattern decoding analysis. Behavioral data from 49 participants indicate that word predictability (i.e., context present vs. absent) facilitated orthographic and lexical‐semantic, but not visual or phonological processes. Magnetoencephalography data from 38 participants show sustained activation of orthographic and lexical‐semantic representations in the interval before processing the predicted stimulus, suggesting selective pre‐activation at multiple levels of linguistic representation as proposed by predictive coding. However, we found more robust lexical‐semantic representations when processing predictable in contrast to unpredictable letter strings, and pre‐activation effects mainly resembled brain responses elicited when processing the expected letter string. This finding suggests that pre‐activation did not result in “explaining away” predictable stimulus features, but rather in a “sharpening” of brain responses involved in word processing.

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“…Neither language-specific (Kuperberg and Jaeger, 2016) nor general theories of predictive coding (Friston, 2005) have discussed restrictions of predictive processing to certain levels of representation to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this possibility should be explored further in future studies (see Gagl et al, 2020, for a recent example from pre-lexical orthographic processing).…”

Section: Implications For Models Of Predictive Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictive pre-activation of orthographic and lexical-semantic representations facilitates visual word recognition

Eisenhauer

Gagl

Fiebach

2020

Preprint

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The efficiency of reading, to a crucial extent, results from the fact that visual word recognition is faster in predictive contexts (like sentences or texts). This observation is consistent with predictive coding models, but it is so far not sufficiently understood which aspects of the rich set of linguistic representations that is activated during reading contribute to this context-dependent facilitation. Candidate representations are visual, orthographic, phonological, and/or lexical-semantic in nature. Our study investigates which representations contribute to efficient word recognition in predictive context with a well-controlled repetition priming paradigm, including words and pseudowords (i.e., pronounceable nonwords), that was combined with magnetoencephalography (MEG) measurements in human participants (both sexes). We used high-powered linear mixed modeling to test the hypothesis that context-dependent facilitation relies on the pre-activation of linguistic representations prior to perceiving the expected stimulus. Behavioral data from 49 participants indicate that word predictability (i.e., context present vs. absent) facilitated orthographic and lexical-semantic, but not visual or phonological processes. MEG data from 38 participants show sustained activation of orthographic and lexical-semantic codes in the interval between prime and target, i.e., before processing the predicted stimulus. Also, we found a positive correlation between these pre-activation effects and brain responses elicited when processing the expected letter string. Pre-activation was more stable across time in words than in pseudowords. These results suggest that readers use orthographic and lexical-semantic representations to actively predict upcoming words and that this predictive process is modulated by the presence of prior knowledge (in words as opposed to pseudowords).

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An orthographic prediction error as the basis for efficient visual word recognition

Cited by 28 publications

References 79 publications

Functional Gradient of the Fusiform Cortex for Chinese Character Recognition

Functional Gradient of the Fusiform Cortex for Chinese Character Recognition

Predictive pre‐activation of orthographic and lexical‐semantic representations facilitates visual word recognition

Predictive pre-activation of orthographic and lexical-semantic representations facilitates visual word recognition

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