Is there room for the BBC in the mental lexicon? On the recognition of acronyms

Brysbaert, Marc; Speybroeck, Sara; Vanderelst, Dieter

doi:10.1080/17470210802585471

Cited by 32 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…This supports the view they the activate unit lexical representations. This conclusion is in line with recent evidence showing that everyday acronyms, such as STATS, FBI, and WC, have their own entries in the mental lexicon (Brysbaert et al, 2009). Furthermore, it has been shown that words and familiar acronyms engage identical processes of semantic access as reflected by the amplitudes of the N400 (Laszlo and Federmeier, 2007a,b;Laszlo and Federmeier, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Electroencephalographic responses to SMS shortcuts

2010

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As the popularity of sending messages electronically increases, so does the necessity of conveying messages more efficiently. One way of increasing efficiency is to abbreviate words and expressions by combining letters with numbers such as gr8 for "great," using acronyms, such as lol for "laughing out loud," or clippings such as msg for "message." The present study compares the processing of shortcuts to the processing of closely matched pseudo-shortcuts. ERPs were recorded while participants were performing a lexical decision task. Response times showed that shortcuts were categorized more slowly as nonwords than pseudo-shortcuts. The ERP results showed no differences between shortcuts and pseudo-shortcuts at time windows 50-150 ms and 150-270 ms, but there were significant differences between 270 and 500 ms. These results suggest that at early stages of word recognition, the orthographic and phonological processing is similar for shortcuts and pseudo-shortcuts. However, at the time of lexical access, shortcuts diverge from pseudoshortcuts, suggesting that shortcuts activate stored lexical representations.© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords:SMS shortcuts N400 Lexical decision task IntroductionThe idea of Short Message Service (SMS) was born as part of the development of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network in the mid-1980s (Crystal, 2008). SMS had a slow start with only 0.4 text messages per month being sent in the late 1990s, but at the beginning of 2001, about 12.2 billion messages per year were sent in the United Kingdom alone (Crystal, 2008). Gartner, the industry analysts, predicted that the total number of SMS sent per year would reach 2.4 trillion by 2010 (Crystal, 2008). As the popularity of sending SMS and communicating online increased, numerous abbreviations were introduced to facilitate the generation of messages. Some abbreviations are combinations of letters and numbers, such as gr8 for great, others are acronyms, such as lol for laughing out loud, yet others are clippings, such as msg for message. These abbreviations can now also be found in poetry and spoken communication, and there are even prizes for the best SMS message (e.g., the Golden Thumb). Early use of SMS is related to children's literacy development, as studies have shown that the more text abbreviations preteenage children use in their text messages, the higher they score on tests for reading and vocabulary (Plester et al., 2008). Despite their popularity, very little is known about the processing of shortcuts. Using shortcuts is efficient and convenient for the sender of the message. However, is it also beneficial for the reader? It had been shown that reading sentences that consisted almost exclusively of SMS language was slower than reading conventionally written sentences (Berger and Coch, 2010;Perea et al., 2009).However, when shortcuts are used sparingly in a sentence, they appear to cause difficulties only in early stages of word

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Electroencephalographic responses to SMS shortcuts

2010

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“…A small number of studies have shown that acronyms and other abbreviations are integrated alongside mainstream words in mental lexicon (Besner, Davellaar, Alcott, & Parry, 1984;Brysbaert, Speybroeck, & Vanderelst, 2009 this is the case and that acronyms fit in the same mental space as common words, it is likely that they are both processed by the same system, although the exact details of the processes underpinning acronym reading are still open to debate. The current study seeks to further contribute to this discussion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, a number of studies suggest that access to semantic from print is similar for acronyms and mainstream words (Brysbaert et al, 2009) and that lexical decision performance is not influenced by the spelling to sound regularity of the stimuli (Hino & Lupker, 1996). Therefore, differences between acronym types were investigated only in the naming task.…”

Section: Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…those acronyms with vowels in them become rather ambiguous at the time of pronunciation as in UCAS and AOL). For this reason a naming task was thought to be particularly suitable to observe differences between acronym types.In addition, a number of studies suggest that access to semantic from print is similar for acronyms and mainstream words (Brysbaert et al, 2009) and that lexical decision performance is not influenced by the spelling to sound regularity of the stimuli (Hino & Lupker, 1996). Therefore, differences between acronym types were investigated only in the naming task.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Are acronyms really irregular? Preserved acronym reading in a case of semantic dementia

2013

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This paper describes the progressive performance of JD, a patient with semantic dementia, on acronym categorisation, recognition and reading aloud over a period of 18 months. Most acronyms have orthographic and phonological configurations that are different from English words (BBC, DVD, HIV). While some acronyms, the majority, are regularly pronounced letter by letter, others are pronounced in a more holistic, and irregular, way (NASA, AWOL). Semantic dementia at its moderate stage shows deficits in irregular word reading while reading accuracy for regular words and novel words is preserved. Nothing is known about acronym comprehension and reading ability in semantic dementia. Thus, in this study we explore for the first time the impact that semantic decline has on acronym recognition and reading processes. The decline in JD's semantic system led to increasingly impaired semantic categorisation and lexical decision for acronyms relative to healthy controls. However, her accuracy for reading aloud regular acronyms (i.e. those pronounced letter by letter such as BBC) remained near ceiling while reading irregular acronyms (i.e. those pronounced as mainstream words such as NASA) demonstrated impairment. It is therefore argued that consequences of semantic impairment vary across acronym types, a finding that informs our understanding of any reading account of this growing class of words.Dear Editor-in-Chief, Please find enclosed our revised manuscript, "Are acronyms really irregular? Preserved acronym reading in a case of semantic dementia" by David Playfoot, Cristina Izura and Jeremy Tree, which we would like to resubmit for publication in Neuropsychologia.We appreciate the time that the reviewers have spent considering our work, and have addressed the issues that they had raised in our resubmission. We thank them for their helpful comments and believe that the paper is stronger for their input. Below we detail our response to each individual comment. The material that we have added is indicated in bold in the manuscript to make it easier for the reviewers to see what we have done. All authors have approved the revised manuscript and agree with its submission to Neuropsychologia. Please address all correspondence to: Dr David Playfoot, Department of Psychology, Southampton Solent University, Above Bar Street, Southampton, SO14 7NN.We look forward to hearing from you at the earliest possible convenience. For instance, an interesting finding of the authors is that as soon as the orthographic rules are violated in a number of words, the patient seems to rely on the letter-by-letter rule, even for words that could be read differently. Indeed, the case could be made that this is the easiest way of pronouncing letter sequences. There is some evidence that acronyms are stored phonologically as sequences of letter names (Brysbaert, Slattery). Response:As recommended by Reviewer 1, Marc Brysbaert, a more precise view and therefore definition of regular/ irregular acronyms is provided in the last paragraph of page 5...

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“…Petit, Midgley, Holcomb, and Grainger (2006) have found also that priming eff ects are practically as strong for visually dissimilar lower-and uppercase versions of a given lett er (e.g., g-G) as they are with more similar combinations (e.g., c-C), and this is true even when the prime is formed from parts of the opposite-case version of the target lett er, such as midsegments (Petit & Grainger, 2002). Similarly, Brysbaert, Speybroeck, and Vanderelst (2009) found that the priming of the acronyms did not depend on the lett er case in which they were presented. Th ese results have been taken as evidence for the existence of abstract lett er representations (Dufor & Rapp, 2013) that disregard lett er shape information (Arguin & Bub, 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Letter Visibility and the Optimal Viewing Position Effect of Isolated Connected and Un-Connected Letters in Arabic

Ganayim¹

2015

Psychology of Language and Communication

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Th e present study provides a further exploration of the role of Arabic lett er visibility as a possible cause of the Optimal Viewing Position (OVP) eff ect. We used isolated connected and un-connected Arabic lett ers of diff erent shapes (basic, initial, medial, fi nal) placed at the center of fi xation (Experiment 1) and at various possible positions in isolated presentation (Experiment 2). In order to investigate whether performance in the visual identifi cation task is modulated by lett er type, we presented each of the isolated connected and un-connected lett er targets in each of the eleven stimulus positions across the array to produce a mean RT (ms) for each of the lett er types. Using the initial fi xation paradigm enabled us to compare reaction times with correctly identifi ed lett er targets appearing in the diff erent possible positions. Th e fi ndings of the present experiments demonstrated that visual lett er recognition is infl uenced by: (i) the isolated lett ers' type (connected, un-connected), as connected lett ers are easier to recognize than un-connected lett ers; (ii) isolated lett ers' shape (basic, initial, medial, fi nal), as medial and fi nal are harder to recognize than basic and initial lett er shapes; (iii) visual fi eld, as reading rates were longer for lett er stimuli that were presented in LVF compared to RVF; and (iv) eccentricity, as lett er reading rates were correlated with their eccentric placement.

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Is there room for the BBC in the mental lexicon? On the recognition of acronyms

Cited by 32 publications

References 27 publications

Electroencephalographic responses to SMS shortcuts

Electroencephalographic responses to SMS shortcuts

Are acronyms really irregular? Preserved acronym reading in a case of semantic dementia

Letter Visibility and the Optimal Viewing Position Effect of Isolated Connected and Un-Connected Letters in Arabic

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