Frequency Effects on Spelling Error Recognition: An ERP Study

Abstract

Spelling errors are ubiquitous in all writing systems. Most studies exploring spelling errors focused on the phonological plausibility of errors. However, unlike typical pseudohomophones, spelling errors occur in naturally produced written language. We investigated the time course of recognition of the most frequent orthographic errors in Russian (error in an unstressed vowel in the root) and the effect of word frequency on this process. During event-related potentials (ERP) recording, 26 native Russian speakers silently read high-frequency correctly spelled words, low-frequency correctly spelled words, high-frequency words with errors, and low-frequency words with errors. The amplitude of P200 was more positive for correctly spelled words than for misspelled words and did not depend on the frequency of the words. In addition, in the 350–500-ms time window, we found a more negative response for misspelled words than for correctly spelled words in parietal–temporal-occipital regions regardless of word frequency. Considering our results in the context of a dual-route model, we concluded that recognizing misspelled high-frequency and low-frequency words involves common orthographic and phonological processes associated with P200 and N400 components such as whole word orthography processing and activation of phonological representations correspondingly. However, at the 500–700 ms stage (associated with lexical-semantic access in our study), error recognition depends on the word frequency. One possible explanation for these differences could be that at the 500–700 ms stage recognition of high-frequency misspelled and correctly spelled words shifts from phonological to orthographic processes, while low-frequency misspelled words are accompanied by more prolonged phonological activation. We believe these processes may be associated with different ERP components P300 and N400, reflecting a temporal overlap between categorization processes based on orthographic properties for high-frequency words and phonological processes for low-frequency words. Therefore, our results complement existing reading models and demonstrate that the neuronal underpinnings of spelling error recognition during reading may depend on word frequency.

Top-down Modulation of Brain Responses in Spelling Error Recognition

“…Wang et al, 2021). The few studies using misspelled words as stimuli showed results similar to ours: N400 was more negative for misspelled words compared to correctly spelled words in the lexical decision task (González-Garrido et al, 2015), in the orthographic decision task (Heldmann et al, 2017), and in the reading task (Larionova & Martynova, 2022). According to some authors, the amplitude of N400 reflects the amount of effort required to integrate orthographic, phonological and semantic information during lexical processing (Grainger & Holcomb, 2009), and the increase in the amplitude of N400 for pseudohomophones is associated with a conflict between orthographic and phonological representations, which makes integration difficult (Briesemeister et al, 2009).…”

“…However, the spelling effect can also be found in the reading task, but less strong than in the decision task. A similar spelling effect for the P2 component was observed in another study using the reading task; however, the P2 amplitude was grater for correctly than for incorrectly spelled words only in the left temporo-parieto-occipital region (Larionova & Martynova, 2022). In addition, in contrast to the present study, in the work of Larionova and Martynova (2022) a shorter stimulus presentation time of 200 ms and a larger number of stimuli were used, which could have contributed to some of the discrepancy in the results.…”

“…However, the increased P2 amplitude in the frontal regions during the orthographic decision task compared to the reading task may be associated with both general differences in attention and modulation of the task-specific process of detecting a conflict between orthography and phonology to determine the correct spelling of words. At the same time, the increase in the P2 amplitude in the posterior regions during the reading task, as well as the spelling effect found in another study in the visual word form area during reading (Larionova & Martynova, 2022) may indicate processes predominantly associated with the recognition of the spelling of the whole word, which are similar to those observed in the 90-160 ms time window in the orthographic decision task, but do not always result in the recognition of correctly spelled words.…”

“…Unfortunately, a comparison of the modulation of the N400 component for pseudohomophones in different paradigms has not been made before. However, in general, an increase in the amplitude of the N400 for pseudohomophones than for words is most commonly found in studies (e.g., Briesemeister et al, 2009; González-Garrido et al, 2015; Hasko et al, 2013; Larionova & Martynova, 2022; Vissers et al, 2006), suggesting that it is independent of the paradigm used.…”

“…Therefore, studies on the recognition of pseudohomophones are closest to the study of spelling errors. Neurophysiological studies of pseudohomophones 1 sometimes use the silent reading paradigm (Araújo et al, 2015;Kemény et al, 2018;Larionova & Martynova, 2022;Sauseng et al, 2004;Vissers et al, 2006), 1 at least González-Garrido et al, 2014, 2015Larionova & Martynova 2022;Taha & Khateb, 2013 used words with real errors as stimuli but more often, they use the lexical decision task wherein the subject needs to determine which stimulus is a word and which is not (Braun et al, 2009;Briesemeister et al, 2009;Costello et al, 2021;González-Garrido et al, 2014, 2015, or similar tasks such as the phonological lexical decision task (Bakos et al, 2018;Hasko et al, 2013), where it is necessary to make a decision about the correspondence of the sound of the stimulus to the word, or the orthographic decision task (Taha & Khateb, 2013), when it is necessary to make a decision on the correct spelling of the word. The spelling decision task is probably the most suitable for studying the processes associated with determining the correct spelling of a word since it gives direct instruction to determine the correct spelling of each stimulus.…”