Phonological effects in visual word recognition: Investigating the impact of feedback activation.

Abstract

P. M. Pexman, S. J. Lupker, and D. Jared (2001) reported longer response latencies in lexical decision tasks (LDTs) for homophones (e.g., maid) than for nonhomophones, and attributed this homophone effect to orthographic competition created by feedback activation from phonology. In the current study, two predictions of this feedback account were tested: (a) In LDT, observe homophone effects should be observed but not regularity or homograph effects because most exception words (e.g., pint) and homographs (e.g., wind) have different feedback characteristics than homophones do, and (b) in a phonological LDT ("does it sound like a word?"), regularity and homograph effects should be observed but not homophone effects. Both predictions were confirmed. These results support the claim that feedback activation from phonology plays a significant role in visual word recognition.

Prosodic phonological representations early in visual word recognition.

“…This interpretation of the N200 appears consistent with data reported by Pexman, Lupker, and Reggin (2002) that suggest that homophone effects in lexical decisions are initially triggered by phonological processing. However, the Pexman et al (2002) study also indicated that homophone effects in lexical decision actually arise from competition in the orthographic system (i.e., the feedback inconsistency effect reported in Stone, Vanhoy, & Van Orden, 1997). Thus, the N200 effect may indicate the early operation of phonological and orthographic processes, rather than primarily a phonological effect.…”

Automatic semantic feedback during visual word recognition

“…If the mediated-priming effect found with orthographically mediated prime-target word pairs was due to semantic feedback's spreading to phonological representations, a mediated-priming effect also should have been found with homophonically mediated word pairs in which mediating (e.g., toad) and target (e.g., towed) words shared considerably more phonology. Furthermore, it is important to note that the absence of mediated priming with homophonically mediated word pairs could not have been due to a lack of phonological activation during target processing, given that the naming task explicitly requires the activation of phonological information (e.g., Frost et al, 2003;Pexman, Lupker, & Reggin, 2002).…”

“…As in previous studies that have utilized the mediated-priming paradigm (e.g., Farrar et al, 2001;Reimer, 2006;Reimer et al, 2001), planned comparisons were used to test for direct-and mediated-priming effects within each type of prime-target word pair. Given that the items used in the present study were not randomly selected, tests using items as the random variable were not conducted in the present study (Wike & Church, 1976; see also Pexman, Lupker, & Reggin, 2002).…”

“…In order to do so, two mediated-priming conditions were used: (1) a homophonemediated condition in which mediating and target words were homophonically related (e.g., frog -[toad]-g g towed) and (2) an orthographic-mediated condition in which mediating and target words were quasihomographically related (e.g., frog-[toad]-g g told). Because homophones possess a high degree of feedback inconsistency f (i.e., the pronunciations of homophones map on to more than one spelling; see Pexman, Lupker, & Reggin, 2002;Stone et al, 1997), use of the homophone-mediated condition made it possible to test semantic feedback under conditions in which the amount of phonological similarity between mediating (e.g., toad) and target (e.g., towed) words was maximized, while, at the same time, minimizing the amount of orthographic overlap. If semantic feedback spreads to phonological representations during lexical processing, target naming should be faster and/or more accurate in the homophone condition (e.g., frog-g g towed) than in a control condition (e.g., kite-towed ).…”

An fMRI study of language processing in people at high genetic risk for schizophrenia

“…The real words were chosen from a public access database (http://www.psych.rl.ac.uk/) based on a rating scale given for number of letters and word imagibility (range 550-700). Pseudowords were chosen from Pexman et al (2002). Concrete nouns were selected for the word stimuli.…”