Language and Reading 1 Flashcards
identify methods that can be used to investigate word recognition
- eye tracking
- lexical decision task
- naming task
explain eye tracking
measuring how long people spend looking at word when reading
explain lexical decision task
measuring how long people take to identify that a string of letters is not a word
explain naming task
presenting ppt a word and measuring how long is takes to start saying that word
which method is often used in conjunction with priming
lexical decision task
why are non-words included in a lexical decision task
to ensure ppts are not answering ‘yes’ constantly
what happens in a lexical decision task
- ppt presented with series of letter strings on computer screen
- asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether they were presented with word or non-word
- this is done by pressing ‘yes’ or ‘no’
- experimenter would record how long it took ppts to respond
- longer the response time = more difficult word is to recognise
what is priming?
where ppt is ‘primed’ with certain stimuli before actual lexical decision task completed
what effect does priming have on word recognition?
- ppts faster to respond to words when shown semantically similar word
- this is known as. semantic priming effect
what happens during the naming task?
- ppts presented with word on computer screen
- warning tone sounded
- word displayed on monitor
- told to pronounce word as quickly as possible without stuttering
- after response recorded, 2 second interval before the tone signalling the next trial
- regardless of correct response, the time it took for ppts to respond was the indication of how difficult word is to recognise
identify factors affecting word recognition
- word frequency
- predictability
- neighbourhood effects
explain how word frequency affects word recognition
commonly used words are recognised more easily than infrequent words
explain how predicatbility affects word recognition
predictable words are recognised more easily than those in neutral or misleading contexts
explain how neighbourhood effects effects word recognition
word identification can be speeded up when similar words exist in the language
what are high frequency words?
words that are encountered often
what are low frequency words?
words that are not encountered often
Outline Schilling et al. (1998) experiment into word frequency and word recognition
- used a naming task, lexical decision task and eye-tracking task
- naming and lexical-decision task used to examine speed of recognition of words presented in isolation
- ppts were presented with high frequency words i.e.: teacher
- ppts were presented with low frequency words i.e.: armadillo
naming task:
- just had to say word aloud as soon as it appeared on screen
eye-tracking task:
- examined how quickly words were recognised when presented in context
- ppts would read sentences containing high/low frequency words
experimenter calculated how long reader spent looking at target words
what were the findings of Schilling et al. (1998)?
- low frequency words took longer to recognise than high frequency words in all 3 tasks
Naming task
- ppts took longer to say word out loud when it was low frequency than when it was high frequency
Lexical Decision Latency
- ppts took longer to press button to indicate that stimulus was a word with low frequency words
Eye-tracking
- amount of time spent looking at word was also longer for long frequency words
CONCLUSION:
- strong evidence that people find words more difficult to recognise when they encounter them less often
How does Tulving and Gold (1963) investigate the effect predictability has on word recognition?
- several studies show that context can influence how easy it is to recognise a word
- investigating whether increasing the amount of semantically related information that is available before the target word is presented will influence word recognition time
- in this experiment, ppts read an incomplete sentence and were asked to recognise a single word
- found that when presenting relevant context before word presented, makes word more predictable
- more predictable = faster word recognition
predictability has a large effect of word recognition processes
what is meant by orthography?
refers to the spelling of words
what is orthographic neighbourhood effects?
the number of words that can be formed by changing one letter of a word
e.g.:
orthographic neighbours of ‘tank’ are:
task (n is changed to and s)
rank (t is changed to an r)
does orthographic neighbourhood effect high frequency words or low frequency words more?
low frequency words are more affected
some studies have shown that low frequency words are recognised more quickly if there are lots of other words in the language that are spelt similarly (if they have a lot of orthographic neighbours)
what is phonology?
refers to how words sound
what phonological neighbourhood effects?
number of words that can be formed by changing one phoneme of a word
words with more phonological neighbours are more easily recognisable
phoneme: unit of sound
Identify the 5 theories of word recognition
- Morton’s Logogen Model
- Word Superiority Model
- Interactive Activation Model
- Dual-Route Model
Explain Morton’s Logogen Model
- model assumes that perceivers have a vast number of specialised recognition units
- each recognition unit can recognize one specific word
- recognition units called ‘word detectors’ or ‘logogens’
- these contain information about the sounds of the word, its syntactic and semantic meanings, information about word type
- all logogens have scale indicating what needs to be reached in activation threshold
- activation threshold of logogens need to be met
- once they are met, logogen then fires
- this means word is recognised
- all information about the word becomes available
- once a logogen fires, all activation levels of competing logogens immediately decrease to their rest level
How is a logogen activated?
- by sensory input
- by contextual information
Which type of words have a lower activation threshold?
high frequency words have lower thresholds for firing
this means they require less stimulus information before word detector is activated
this means they are recognised quicker
How does the logogen model explain predictability effects?
- cognitive component of the logogen model explains how sentence context can affect recognition
- cognitive components interact with the logogen system (word detectors) when reading about a particular context i.e.: a book set in a hospital
- this interaction may cause the logogen system to partially activate relevant words to that context i.e.: doctor, nurse
- as these particular words are already partially activated, less input is required to reach the activation threshold so will be recognised quicker
- this relates to predictability effect which suggests that the context can affect how quickly a word is recognised
- the semantic information partially activates logogens which lowers their activation threshold
- this therefore decreases the amount of information needed from the word itself to fire the logogen
Explain the word superiority model
- this effect was discovered using the ‘Reicher-Wheeler Task’
- in this task, ppt presented with stimulus which is then masked
- after this. ppts have to make a choice about which letter they saw in a particular position
condition 1
- ppts would be presented with two letters to choose between and would have to indicate which one was the letter they saw previously
condition 2
- ppts would see the same letter in the same position, but this time in the context of a word
- i.e.: ‘WORK’ presented as stimuli, letter K is presented in final position as part of the word ‘work’
- mppt would have the same task as before where they would need to indicate which letter they had seen in that position
What were the findings of Reicher (1969) and Wheeler (1970) study into word superiority effect?
- the task suggests that there is a 10% improvement in performance when ppts have seen the whole word compared to being shown a single letter
- therefore concluded that it is easier to identify a letter in the context of a word than when letter is on it’s own
define word superiority effect
this is where performance is better when the string of letters forms a word than when it does not
word superiority effect suggests that information about a word presented can help with the identification of the letters in that word
Explain the interactive activation model
model designed to explain how information from the whole word can improve performance when the task involved the recognition of an individual letter
Explain how the interactive activation model works?
consists of three levels of detectors:
1. feature detectors
2. letter detectors
3. word detectors
first level contains feature detectors which detects features of letters including vertical or horizontal lines
second level contains letter detectors which feature detectors feed into. This is where letters that contain the features activated in the first level, also become activated
third level is where the output of the letter detectors activate word level detectors
what types of connections are there in the interactive activation model?
excitatory
inhibitory
what are excitatory connections for in the interactive activation model?
excitatory connections occur with consistent connections
this means they increase activation of what they’re connected to
what are inhibitory connections for in the interactive activation model?
inconsistent connections
these inhibit connections
give an example of excitatory connections and inhibitory connections
if the letter ‘W’ was first activated in the first letter position, this will feed up the network and activate words beginning with ‘W’
the letter W in the first letter position activated
words beginning with the letter ‘W’ activated, words that do not start with W are inhibited
activation from word level will feed down network to letter level
this is where consistent letters like ‘w’ ‘o’ ‘r’ ‘k’ will receive more activation and inconsistent letters will be inhibited
word detectors detect words that contain these letters … ‘WORK’
feedback from word level to letter level can explain word superiority effect
how does network feedback from word level to level letter explain word superiority effect?
word superiority effect: information about a word helps with identification of the letters in that word
if ppt is able to recognise the word ‘WORK’ and are then presented with the options of letters ‘k’ or ‘d’, the letter ‘k’ has already received activation from seeing the word ‘WORK’
the letter ‘d’ will have been inhibited as it does not fit into the word ‘WORK’
the inhibition of the letter ‘d’ makes it easier for ppt to identify ‘k’
what is a weakness of the interactive interaction model?
- suggests each letter has own slot that must fit into for word to be recognised
- if any letters are out of place, for example a misspelt word, this theory would suggest that the word would not be recognisable
this model cannot account for misspelt words
What is the transposed letter priming effects?
- interactive activation model would suggest misspelt words cannot be recognised
- there is evidence that words can still be recognised when misspelt
- the idea is that you should be able to still recognise a word if there are certain letters still in the same place as the original word
- therefore, if you were to prime a word like ‘judge’ with a word where 2 of the letters are switched around, it should provide the same level of priming (reaction time for word recognition) if any two letters were used
- priming should speed up word recognition
transposed letter priming is where letters are swapped around
substitution priming is where letters are completely changed
What does the Dual-Route Model explain?
model designed to explain how we read aloud
can also explain difficulties people experience with dyslexia
What are the two routes in the dual-route model by which a word can be read out?
direct route
phonological route
explain the direct route of the dual-route model
- directly links visually presented words to whole word’s mental representation
- route typically used for high frequency words
- allows reader to directly access word then pronounce it as information on how word is pronounced is contained in mental lexicon
explain the phonological route of the dual-route model
- more in-direct route
- used for non-word or low frequency words
- words are spelt out using grapheme to phoneme conversion rules before they can be pronounced
How can the dual-route explain dyslexia?
- if either route does not develop properly, it could lead to two different types of dyslexia
what are the two types of dyslexia that can be explained by dual-route model?
- developmental surface dyslexia
- developmental phonological dyslexia
explain surface dyslexia
- characterised by problems reading irregular words
- when presented with irregular words, readers use direct route
- this is used to recover connected pronunciation which is stored in mental lexicon
- in this type of dyslexia, direct route = impaired
- this means readers will decode words with irregular spelling patterns using phonological route
- words like ‘pint’ would sound like ‘mint’ instead which is incorrect
- this type of dyslexia does not lead to issues with non-words as this requires sounding words out using phonological route which is not impaired
explain phonological dyslexia
- characterised by difficulty reading non-words or nonsense words
- the only way to read non-words is by sounding them out/decoding them
- phonological dyslexia assumes there is a deficit in developing the phonological route
- the application of grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules has not been mastered or is impaired
