Visual word recognition

Question 1

What does a lexical decision task involve?

Answer 1

A straightforward and cost-effective way of looking at word processing
Participants have to decide whether a word on the screen in a real word or not
Interested in response latency i.e. how quickly correct responses are selected, and also how many times key for “yes” pressed wrongly

Question 2

What factors can be manipulated within this task to explore the factors affecting word recognition?

Answer 2

Word frequency

Semantic priming

Question 3

What does the word frequency effect suggest?

Answer 3

We are quicker to respond to words we encounter frequently in written form (secondary influence is frequency hear a word)
This effect occurs when words matched for length and semantic meaning (length generally only makes a difference when words long enough to require eye movement)
Suggests words encountered frequently are encoded and stored more efficiently and are thus more easily retrievable

Question 4

What do semantic priming experiment results suggest?

Answer 4

When immediately preceded by a related prime, recognition of words/non-words has a shorter response latency
Suggests words are linked in our brains by meaning, so when one is activated another is activated to an extent so is quicker to identify
An alternative explanation relates to inter-word associations e.g. robin is more readily associated with hood than with bird

Question 5

What are some problems with the standard lexical decision making tasks?

Answer 5

Artificial situation - we naturally read for meaning not for decision-making
Overt decision-making through button presses is again unnatural behaviour
Arguably not a pure measure of access to a visual lexicon

Question 6

How do eye tracking methods work?

Answer 6

Using measures of fixation duration - longer fixations reliably correlate with greater processing difficulty, and fixations have been shown to be far shorter for common rather than uncommon words

Question 7

How can we use neurophysiological data to analyse word recognition processing?

Answer 7

ERP waveforms show a common pattern of peaks which occur every time we see a word
Each one represents a different stage of processing
Show us size of effects and also time course for processing words with different characteristics

Question 8

What is meant by Lexical Access?

Answer 8

Checking the brain for knowledge of a word, and if able to identify it this initiates programming of motor movements for eye movement
Argued to be related to N1 where we see a separation between high frequency and low frequency words

Question 9

What did Sereno et al do in their experiment?

Answer 9

Participants viewed individual high and low frequency words and the EEG signal was averaged over many words (from onset to recognition)
In the first 60ms –> early processing in the visual cortex
N400 = How well we contextually fit a word –> larger inflection when the context is inappropriate
Amplitude of N1 lower for high frequency

Question 10

What do the “finished files” demonstrate?

Answer 10

Automaticity of word recognition - brain picks up information about next word and anticipates what it might be while reading a word
If anticipation is easy we will skip over the word without being consciously aware esp where confounded by short length and minimal semantic information

Question 11

What did Shriffin and Schneider demonstrate regarding automaticity of word recognition?

Answer 11

1) Task doesn’t require attention - priming effects work even when very short exposure and masking
2) Not under conscious control i.e. we can’t stop it happening - seen in the Stroop task where we get interference from the highly automatized visual processing of the written form
3) Doesn’t require much in the way of processing capacity - can happen in parallel with other tasks without taking much away from them

Question 12

What did Raynor et al demonstrate using the moving window technique?

Answer 12

Participants showed one word at a time for only 50ms before masking
The task was difficult - far more effortful due to the speed so had to think very carefully about the words
However participants could still read the text, suggesting little processing capacity needed

Question 13

What is a real-world implication of the automaticity effect?

Answer 13

Advertising - familiarity so subsequently comes to mind more easily

Question 14

What did Reicher suggest regarding letter perception?

Answer 14

Words are not read by recognising letters individually - we can still read fairly well using degraded visual input
This is the WORD SUPERIORITY EFFECT - easier to detect the presence of a single letter presented briefly when in the context of a word
Lexical access guides letter identification

Question 15

What is a mental visual lexicon?

Answer 15

Where words and their structures are stored and we can use this knowledge when we have enough partial sensory information to activate a specific lexicon

We have “units of representation” which can be words in themselves i.e. letter clusters which influence subsequent recognition of other letters and words

Question 16

What is the time course of recognition?

Answer 16

We can recognise letter differences at 100ms i.e. sossage v sausage
We recognise identity as word or non-word based on letters at around 200ms

Question 17

What is special about the word superiority effect?

Answer 17

Will even stand for non-words as long as they follow the standard combinatorial language rules i.e. wouldn’t stand for nonsense syllables

Question 18

What does McClelland and Rumelhart’s Interactive Activation Model suggest?

Answer 18

Hierarchical model consisting of an initial feature recognition stage, followed by letter detection through activation of candidate letters
Possible lexical candidates subsequently accessed
Top-down contextual processing helps when dealing with degraded input such as handwriting or ink blots - make hypotheses about likely words based on sensory information available, and the prominent word at lexical level feeds back down to letter level
There is competition at every level as alternatives battle out to be selected

Question 19

Why is there controversy around the Interactive Activation Model?

Answer 19

Over extent to which higher level processes such as semantics actually influence visual perceptual processing
Ideas if it being more to do with inter-word association, and possibility that it is the decision making part rather than the lexical access itself in the lexical decision tasks that may be influence by semantic top-down input, AFTER actual word recognition

Question 20

What is meant by activation levels in this model?

Answer 20

Common words have lower activation levels i.e. activate more quickly than less common words

Question 21

What is the visual form area?

Answer 21

Located in the fusiform gyrus - neurons here respond to particular visual features and have large receptive fields
Damage here produces pure letter-by-letter reading i.e. pure alexia
Braille studies have suggested this area is more involved with processing of different types of shapes rather than specifically words

Question 22

What occurs in pure alexia?

Answer 22

Reading is compromised without impairment of spelling, writing or verbal dyslexia
Words read letter by letter (i.e. serially rather than parallel processing)

Question 23

What is peripheral dyslexia characterised by? How is it different from central dyslexia?

Answer 23

Disruption of processing up to computation of word form

Central involves disruption at stage of meaning

Question 24

How can the interactive activation model explain the word superiority effect?

Answer 24

When see whole word, get letter level activation from both feature level and word level, rather than just receiving feature level input when shown letter isolated