Visual Word Recognition

Question 1

Word Recognition

Answer 1

One word has been singled out in the lexicon.

Question 2

Lexical Access

Answer 2

All types of info about word accessed in the mental lexicon. Mostly semantic information.

Question 3

Magic Moment (Balota, 1990)

Answer 3

Discrete instance when a reader recognises a word, but does not yet know its meaning.

Meaning accessed after recognition.

Question 4

Method - Reading Techniques

Answer 4

Silently read. Measure how long spend looking at word.

Subject paced - Indv presses button when have finished reading. Tracks RT.

Eye-movements - Info on how we recognise words and process large units of language. Eye movement not smooth during reading. Travels in jumps called saccades. Still periods are fixations. Regressions are referring back.

Question 5

Method - Naming Task

Answer 5

Present with word and then say it.

E.g. reading aloud, picture naming

Question 6

Method - Lexical Decision Tasks

Answer 6

Measures how long people take to decide whether or not a string of letters is a word.

Criticism
- Reflects participants strategies rather than automatic processes of lexical access because it measures decision making times and pure lexical access times.

Question 7

Method - Semantic Categorisation Task

Answer 7

Measures how long people take to categorise a word.

Question 8

Word Superiority Effect

Answer 8

Letters are easier to recognise when they are presented in words compared to non-words or isolation.

Question 9

Reicher (1969)

Answer 9

• Word superiority effect
• Task to decide which letter in position
• Letters were easier to recognise when embedded (83%)
• Suggests there is a context effect on letter recognition and words are not recognised on a letter-by-letter basis

Question 10

Syllable

Answer 10

Unit of organisation of a sequence of speech sounds

Question 11

Prinzmetal, Treiman & Rho (1986)

Answer 11

• Task to report color of letter in next word in a syllable compatible or incompatible division.
• Syllable boundaries are recognised and represented as natural perceptual groupings in visual word recognition
• More errors made when a target letter was positioned in a syllable incompatible division

Question 12

What is a morpheme and what are the different types of morpheme?

Answer 12

Smallest units of language that have meaning.

Derivational Morphology: Change meaning of words by applying derivations

Inflectional Morphology: Units that do not change meaning of words by expressing a grammatical function

Compounding: Multiple words connected to make new compound words e.g. teapot

Question 13

Taft and Forster (1976)

Answer 13

Rejection of non-words takes longer if they contain real-word components, as readers recognise these real words embedded in non-words and morphologically decompose visual words

Question 14

Taft & Forster (1975)

Answer 14

Readers decompose complex words into morphemes before they access the entry for the root morpheme in the mental lexicon

Question 15

Marslen-Wilson et al. (1994)

Answer 15

• Cross-modal priming task with lexical decision. Say if second word English or not.
• Priming effect and performance best predicted when prime and target morphologically and semantically related
  Suggests that only “semantically-transparent” morphemes are decomposed

Question 16

SOA

Answer 16

Stimulus onset asynchrony

Duriation between prime onset and target onset

Question 17

ISI

Answer 17

Inter-stimulus interval

Duration between prime offset and target onset

Question 18

Word frequency effect

Answer 18

High frequency words are processed faster than low-frequency words

Question 19

Neighbour

Answer 19

A word that can be created by changing one letter or phoneme

Question 20

Orthographic Neighbourhood Size

Answer 20

Number of words that can be created by changing a single letter.

Question 21

Coltheart et al. (1977)

Answer 21

• Lexical decision task into neighbourhood size and whether it matters.
• No effects of neighbourhood size on time taken to accept high-density and low-density words
• Neighbourhood size had inhibitory effects on non-words. Rejecting high-density non-words took longer than low-density non-words, because word neighbours are activated and interfere with decision making.

Question 22

Andrews (1989)

Answer 22

• Neighbourhood size had facilitatory effects on low-frequency words, by which accepting high-density words took less time than low-density words

Question 23

Grainger et al. (1989):

Answer 23

• Orthographic neighbourhood frequency had inhibitory effects in lexical decision, but facilitatory in naming task.

Question 24

Sears, Hino & Lupker (1995)

Answer 24

• Orthographic neighbourhood frequency had facilitatory effects for low-frequency words with neighbours of higher frequency in a high-density neighbourhood