Word Recognition - Week 9 Flashcards
What are the two best study methods?
Practice testing
Distributed practice
What does the black box refer to?
What processes occur to convert input into output
What are the four basic research methods discussed?
Tachistoscopic identification
Eye-tracking and eye movements
Reaction time (lexical decision tasks, priming tasks)
Neuroimaging
Describe tachistoscopic identification
Old method that was used
Similar to our current computer programming
Can show participants words for very short presentation times
Describe eye-tracking and eye movements
Record behaviour through eye movements or through key pressing
Bubbles refer to points where you eyes stay (bigger = longer)
Lines refer to paths
What do the saccade and fixation refer to on an eye tracking test?
Fixation (bubbles) refer to points where you eyes stay (bigger = longer), 200-250ms
Saccade (lines) refer to paths, quick 20-60ms
Do our eyes move smoothly when we read?
No
Describe the study design to test how text difficulty influences eye movement
Had individuals rate the difficulty of reading for different passages, and tracked their eye movement during
Then asked them a series of reading comprehension questions
Tracked the average fixation duration,
What did they track when testing how text difficulty influences eye movement
Tracked the average fixation duration (FD), # of fixations, total time, accuracy
Describe the results of the study that tested how text difficulty influences eye movement
When reading a more difficult paragraph you tend to have longer fixation duration (not too much), more fixations, and longer reading time
Did not have a significant result for accuracy
Define anaphor
A word or phrase that refers to an earlier word or phrase, often can be pronouns
Describe the study design to test eye movement properties during anaphor processing
Used anaphors correctly and incorrectly to see how it would effect eye movement
Describe the results of the study that tested eye movement properties during anaphor processing
Longer gaze duration, more regression (look backs) in the inconsistent anaphor sentences
Describe reaction time
Tracks the speed at which you react to certain words
More important than accuracy in adults
Define lexical decision tasks
Lexical = word
Decision = judgement
Most often given stimulus and have to decide whether it is a word or a non-word
Define priming tasks
Activating an association or representation in memory just before another stimulus or task is introduced
Have a prime and a target
What was the example of priming task on babies?
Would say “I saw a lorry bike”
When you say bike, you should expect them to look at the bike, quicker than if you said something unrelated and then bike
What does ISI stand for?
Inter stimulus interval
Between two stimulus (lexical decision only need one, priming need two)
What does SOA stand for?
Stimulus onset asynchrony
Time between when you show the stimulus and when you are able to respond (e.g., if you have to wait for the stimulus to be shown)
Define semantic priming
Words that are semantically related (e.g, vehicles)
Define phonological priming
Words that start with the same sound
Not as accurate since we typically categorize words based on categories rather than sounds
Describe the results from the priming task on babies?
For semantic priming only 24 month olds had discrepancies between the related and unrelated primes (more likely to look when they have the prime)
For phonological priming can see discrepancies between the related and unrelated primes at 21 months and a reverse results for the 24 months (higher for unrelated, doesn’t super make sense)
Describe neuroimaging
Track the areas of the brain to see the activation
Describe Visual Word Form Area
VWFA
Areas of the brain that are associated with visually processing written language (reading)
Back of the head, the occipital area
Between temporal and occipital area
Left hemisphere
Describe the study for the visual word form area study?
Asked people to read words, scrambled words, objects, and scrambled object
Wanted to know what part of the brain was activated during the words vs scrambled words and objects
Describe the results for the visual word form area study?
Shows us that there is most activation in the VWFA and left hemisphere when looking at words and scrambled words
With looking at objects the VWFA does not show much activation, also see more right hemisphere activation
What is masking?
When you show the target and then show a mask (random thing) to refresh the retina to avoid lingering, ensures duration of stimulus
Can masking interfere with identification?
Ya, depends on how long the target is displayed
What are some factors that make recognition easier or harder?
Word frequency
Word length
Neighbourhood size/frequency effect
Age of acquisition
Word vs nonword
Repetition priming
Describe the word frequency study
Use tachistoscopic identification and ask to identify words that are being briefly flashed
Describe the results from the word frequency study
Negatively correlated ~0.7
Words that are more frequently used, you take less time to identify, lower frequency words take longer to identify
What was an addition question for the word frequency study?
Is it experiential familiarity or your the objective word frequency that determines your reaction time
How is familiarity tested?
Subjective ratings
Explain bigram frequency
Measures how often a pair of letters occurs (e.g., “th” occurs often)
What were the results from examining bigram frequency and familiarity on word frequency?
High or low bigram frequency did not differ that much
High familiarity has lower reaction times compared to low familiarity
What are the different ways that word length can be measured by?
Number of letters
Number of syllables
How long it takes to say
Number of phonemes
Describe the word length study
Wanted to contrast to see if number of letters or syllables that determine word accuracy
Had words with different lengths and syllables and had participants do a naming task and a lexical decision task
Describe the results of the word length study
Number of letters being held the same did not show meaningful differences
With the same syllables, adding letters slowed down your reaction times
Describe the prepared/unprepared word length study
Tested to see if whether participants were familiarized with the words would make a difference
Describe the prepared/unprepared word length results
For the prepared, they had a faster reaction time
Interaction between number of syllables and reaction time in prepared group, but if you increase syllables in the unprepared group there is a difference in reaction time
Define neighbourhood size (N -statistic)
The number of words that can be created by changing one letter of a target word
Describe the neighbourhood size/frequency effect study
Provide participants with words that had big or small neighbourhood sizes, as well as high and low frequency words and non words
Tested reaction time
Describe the results of the neighbourhood size/frequency effect study
High frequency words show little difference in reaction time between large and small neighbourhoods
Low frequency words with large neighbourhood react faster than small
Non words show the inverse effect from low frequency words
Describe the age of acquisition effects
Faster reaction time to the words you learn earlier in life
What were the two factors in the word vs nonword study?
Homophone (e.g., allowed or bloo)
Control (non homophone)
Describe the word vs nonword study
Would people respond slower to a nonword with a homophone vs no homophone (only through reading)
Describe the results from the word vs nonword study
Words did not differ much in reaction times between homophones and control
Non words with homophones have a longer reaction times than control and words
Describe the repetition priming study
Priming phase: read a list of words
Test phase: word naming
Deserve the results for the repetition priming study
Non primed, low frequency words have low accuracy
Primed, low frequency words have higher accuracy
High frequency words do not show much difference
Define form-based priming
Does not get encoded, stays at orthographic level (done with masking)
What are the two ways of semantic processing?
Automatic: fast, not always conscious
Attentional: slow, have to think
Describe Neely (1977) two process semantic priming model
Show automatic and attention processing in semantic priming/word recognition, using a lexical decision task
Used a prime, target, then response
Semantically related you should react faster
What were the manipulations in Neely (1977) two process semantic priming model
Word relations: semantically related, unrelated and neutral prime
Expectation: shift trials (body as prime, target should be a building), no shift trials
SOA: 250ms-2000ms
Describe the results from the no shift condition in Neely (1977) two process semantic priming model
No shift, significant facilitation effect
Shift (unexpected), significant inhibition effect, increases with SOA
Describe the results from the shift condition in Neely (1977) two process semantic priming model
Expected shift, facilitation effect, increases with SOA
No shift (same category), facilitation at the smallest SOA, increasing inhibition with longer SOA
Unexpected shifts, inhibition at all times, increases with SOA
Define lexical ambiguity
When you say something that can be interpreted in many different ways
What are the four types of ambiguity
Polysemous
Homophones
Homographs
Homonyms
Define polysemous
Words that can refer to more than one related word sense
Define homophones
Words that sound the same but have different meanings
Define homographs
Words that are spelled the same but have different meanings
Define homonyms
Words that are spelled and sound the same but have different meanings
