Visual Word Recognition

Question 1

How many years have we been studying reading/writing?

Answer 1

5400 years

Question 2

What are 3 properties of visual word recognition?

Answer 2

1. Fast and automatic
2. Flexible
3. Precise

Question 3

How many words per minute do adults read?

Answer 3

250-300

Question 4

How long does it take for the brain to distinguish between words and non words?

Answer 4

200 ms

Question 5

What does it mean when we say word recognition is flexible?

Answer 5

It can understand different scripts/fonts/handwriting

Question 6

What does it mean when we say that word recognition is precise?

Answer 6

We are able to distinguish between words that are similar (TRAIL/TRIAL).

Question 7

What were the findings of the ERP Megastudy (Dufau et al., 2015)?

Answer 7

The brain processes word information quickly.

Concreteness - 300-400ms
Word frequency - 300-400ms
Number of letters - 200ms
Visual complexity - 100ms

Question 8

What task was used in the ERP Megastudy (Dufau et al., 2015)?

Answer 8

Go/no-go lexical decision task.

Question 9

What 2 aspects did Hauk et al. (2006) look at in relation to word recognition? What were the findings?

Answer 9

Typicality and lexicality.
Typicality processed at 100ms.
Lexicality processed at 200ms.

Question 10

What is an example of a typical and an atypical word?

Answer 10

Typical: lint
Atypical: kiwi

Question 11

What is the lexicality of words?

Answer 11

Words vs pseudowords.

Question 12

What were Stroop’s (1935) findings?

Answer 12

People are slower to name the ink colour than reading the words aloud.

Question 13

What were Bisson et al. (2012)’s findings about the automatic nature of word recognition through eye movements?

Answer 13

We are very drawn to written words (subtitles).

Question 14

What were the findings about the automatic nature of word recognition through masked priming?

Answer 14

A masked orthographically related non-word prime generally speeds up target word processing relative to an orthographically unrelated prime (e.g. Forster et al., 1987).

e.g. bontrast - CONTRAST vs. shaulder - CONTRAST.

Question 15

What is the prime duration usually?

Answer 15

20-250ms (usually 60ms).

Question 16

What are the 3 phases of a masked prime paradigm?

Answer 16

Mask - Prime - Target.

Question 17

What did Ferrand & Grainger (1993) find in their study using masked priming?

Answer 17

When the prime is presented for a shorter duration, orthographically similar words are recognised quicker.

When the prime is presented for longer, phonologically similar words are recognised quicker.

Question 18

What were Parea et al.’s (2015) findings on case alternation’s influence on word recognition?

Answer 18

It didn’t matter at all. The priming effect was the same whether the prime word was in all lower caps or alternating case.

Question 19

What were Moret-Tatay et al.’s (2011) findings on the influence of font on word recognition? What % of the participation was this found in?

Answer 19

Sans serif words were recognised 19 ms faster than words written in serif font.

This effect was found for 80% of the participants.

Question 20

Is orthographic processing unique to humans?

Answer 20

No. Baboons were able to learn some words. (Grainger et al., 2012).

Question 21

What is orthographic processing of words?

Answer 21

Breaking down the word into features > whole letters > whole word.

Question 22

What was the process of Grainger at al.’s (2012) baboon experiment?

Answer 22

1. Baboons were presented with a word or a non word.
2. They had to decide whether it was a real word or not.
3. They were rewarded if they were correct.

Question 23

If the non word looks like a word, the accuracy is ________.

Answer 23

Reduced.

Question 24

How can we distinguish between anagrams?

Answer 24

Position specific coding (letters are associated with a certain position in a word).

Question 25

Who came up with the Interactive Activation model?

Answer 25

McClelland & Rumelhart (1981)

Question 26

What is the Interactive Activation model?

Answer 26

This is loosely based on the idea of a neural network. It is a localist connection model - there is direct mapping between nodes/things in a network.

Question 27

What 3 sections is the Interactive Activation model broken down into?

Answer 27

1. Visual features 2. Letters 3. Words

Question 28

Interactive Activation model: When a feature is recognised, it sends ______ to a letter.

Answer 28

Excitation.

Question 29

Word nodes _______ all other word nodes. This is known as ____________.

Answer 29

Inhibit. Lateral inhibition.

Question 30

What was the original Interactive Activation model developed for?

Answer 30

An English lexicon of 4-letter words

Question 31

How many pools of representations are there at letter and feature levels of the Interactive Activation model?

Answer 31

4 (1 for each letter positioning)

Question 32

Interactive Activation model: What does resting level activated of word nodes vary between?

Answer 32

-0.046 and 0.

Question 33

Interactive Activation model: What does activation of each node vary between?

Answer 33

-0.2 and 1.0.

Question 34

What is transposition priming? How does this affect response time?

Answer 34

Where 2 letters are swapped in a word. eg. anwser-ANSWER Response time stays very similar.

Question 34

What is transposition priming? How does this affect response time?

Answer 34

Where 2 letters are swapped in a word. eg. anwser-ANSWER Response time stays very similar.

Question 35

What is relative position priming?

Answer 35

Letters maintain their relative positions but dashes were added in or letters were removed.

Question 36

What did Grainger et al. (2006) find in their study on relative position priming effect?

Answer 36

The relative position prime still acted as a prime, suggesting the order of the letters is what's significant in word recognition.

Question 37

What is the Open Bigram Model?

Answer 37

This model codes the relative position of adjacent and non-adjacent letters using open bigrams. Eg. TAKE activates open bigrams: TA, TK, TE, AK, AE, and KE.

Question 38

Open Bigram Model: How do you calculate the overlap between prime and target?

Answer 38

By counting the shared open bigrams between the prime and target. The model assumes a maximum of two intervening letters. gadren - GARDEN has 92% overlap (11/12) galten - GARDEN has 25% overlap (3/12)

Question 39

What is the Overlap Model (Gomez et al., 2008)?

Answer 39

A method that calculates the match between the prime and the target. (Computation of the orthographic overlap between two strings).

Question 40

What is the Spatial Coding Model (Davis, 2010)? What type of model is this?

Answer 40

The order of letters is transformed in a set of temporal values assigned to each letter. It is a localist connectionist model.

Question 40

What is the Spatial Coding Model (Davis, 2010)? What type of model is this?

Answer 40

The order of letters is transformed in a set of temporal values assigned to each letter. It is a localist connectionist model.

Question 41

What 3 open bigram models did Kinoshita & Norris (2013) compare the match-value of in Experiment 1? What were the findings?

Answer 41

1. binaryOB 2. OOB 3. SERIOL Priming effect was strong for id-2letters. Match values didn't predict a priming value for TL-2letters but there was one.

Question 42

What did Kinoshita & Norris (2013) look at in Experiment 2? What were the findings?

Answer 42

They manipulated the number of intervening letters of the open bigram. The models didn't predict a priming effect but one was found.

Question 43

What is a limitation of open bigram models?

Answer 43

The role of semantics isn't considered.

Question 44

What did Perea & Lupker find in their study of the role in semantics?

Answer 44

They questioned: Can JUDGE activate COURT? Judge DID produce a priming effect. This supports the role of semantics.