Hemispheric asymmetries in word recognition as revealed by the orthographic uniqueness point effect

Abstract

The orthographic uniqueness point (OUP) refers to the first letter of a word that, reading from left to right, makes the word unique. It has recently been proposed that OUPs might be relevant in word recognition and their influence could inform the long-lasting debate of whether – and to what extent – printed words are recognized serially or in parallel. The present study represents the first investigation of the neural and behavioral effects of OUP on visual word recognition. Behaviourally, late OUP words were identified faster and more accurately in a lexical decision task. Analysis of event-related potentials demonstrated a hemispheric asymmetry on the N170 component, with the left hemisphere appearing to be more sensitive to the position of the OUP within a word than the right hemisphere. These results suggest that processing of centrally presented words is likely to occur in a partially parallel manner, as an ends-in scanning process.

MEGALEX: A megastudy of visual and auditory word recognition

“…8). These results are consistent with those of Izura et al (2014), Miller et al (2006), and Radeau et al (1992). The same OUP effect was obtained in the auditory modality.…”

“…OUP were processed more slowly than words with a late OUP (Izura, Wright, & Fouquet, 2014;Miller, Juhasz, & Rayner, 2006;Radeau, Morais, Mousty, Saerens, & Bertelson, 1992), suggesting that word processing is likely to occur in a parallel manner. Here, we found that words with an early OUP were processed more slowly than words with a late OUP in the visual modality (see Fig.…”

“…This overall activation is higher when a target word activates many similar word forms than when it has a unique letter sequence" (see Grainger & Jacobs, 1996; see also Dufau, Grainger, & Ziegler, 2012;Grainger, 2017). A fourth difference is that readers process words with an early orthographic uniqueness point more slowly than words with a late orthographic uniqueness point (see also Izura et al, 2014;Miller et al, 2006;Radeau et al, 1992), whereas listeners process words with an early phonological uniqueness point more quickly than words with a late phonological uniqueness point (see also Radeau et al, 2000;Radeau et al, 1989). These results suggest that processing of visually presented words is likely to occur in a parallel manner, whereas processing of auditory presented words is likely to occur in a sequential manner.…”

Lateralization and cognitive systems

“…With more than 5500 article views and an AM score of more than 50 by the time this editorial was written, this article has gained more online attention than almost any other work published in Frontiers in Cognition. Other authors investigated visual lateralization (Asanowicz et al, 2013 ; Pellicano et al, 2013 ; Helon and Króliczak, 2014 ), asymmetries in emotional processing (Propper and Brunyé, 2013 ; Grimshaw and Carmel, 2014 ), behavioral lateralization (Morton, 2013 ; Corbetta et al, 2014 ), and asymmetries in face (Coronel and Federmeier, 2014 ) and body representation (Hach and Schütz-Bosbach, 2014 ), as well as in word generation (Meyer et al, 2014 ) and word recognition (Izura et al, 2014 ). Finally, some authors also investigated the impact of lateralized processing on executive functioning, the topic which had initially inspired this Research Topic (Marsh et al, 2013 ; Ocklenburg et al, 2013a ; Kéïta et al, 2014 ; Stock and Beste, 2014 ).…”

Lateralization and cognitive systems

“…With more than 5500 article views and an AM score of more than 50 by the time this editorial was written, this article has gained more online attention than almost any other work published in Frontiers in Cognition. Other authors investigated visual lateralization (Asanowicz et al, 2013;Pellicano et al, 2013;Helon and Króliczak, 2014), asymmetries in emotional processing (Propper and Brunyé, 2013;Grimshaw and Carmel, 2014), behavioral lateralization (Morton, 2013;Corbetta et al, 2014), and asymmetries in face (Coronel and Federmeier, 2014) and body representation (Hach and Schütz-Bosbach, 2014), as well as in word generation (Meyer et al, 2014) and word recognition (Izura et al, 2014). Finally, some authors also investigated the impact of lateralized processing on executive functioning, the topic which had initially inspired this Research Topic (Marsh et al, 2013;Ocklenburg et al, 2013a;Kéïta et al, 2014;Stock and Beste, 2014).…”