Word processing during reading

Question 1

What is a lexicon?

Answer 1

Store of representations corresponding to words we know (word MEANINGS are not necessarily stored with these representations, but rather orthographic representations are somehow linked with semantics elsewhere)

Question 2

What is meant by lexical access?

Answer 2

Matching a perceived stimulus with stored representations –> generates a CANDIDATE SET e.g. “fast” would generate a candidate set of “last”, “fats” etc

Question 3

What is lexical identification?

Answer 3

Identifying a single candidate that exactly matches the perceived word

Question 4

Outline the process of identification following presentation of a stimulus

Answer 4

Letter feature –> orthographic identification (abstract letter representation)
Orthography leads to both phonology and lexical access, and phonology can also feed down to lexical access
Lexical identification follows lexical access and then onto semantics
Semantics feedback to orthography as top-down input to help guide lexical identification

Question 5

What is done during single word response time tasks?

Answer 5

In a lexical decision making task the participant is asked if a stimulus is a real word, yes or no
In a naming task participants must name a word as quickly and accurately as possible and the time to voice onset is measured
Semantic categorisation tasks involve questions like “is this word an animal, yes or no”

Question 6

Why are single word response time tasks useful?

Answer 6

Test the time taken to process words
The different tasks use different levels of processing e.g. semantic categorisation involves processing right up to the level of meaning

Question 7

What are the 3 advantages of single word response time tasks?

Answer 7

“Pure effects” - no contextual influence
Control over acuity (fixation position)
Efficient experimentally

Question 8

What are the 3 disadvantages of single word response time tasks?

Answer 8

DVs are slow (button pressing/naming) so the method is not necessarily sensitive to very early processing
“Decision” process influences response
Not naturalistic behaviour

Question 9

What are 6 aspects of natural reading that cannot be picked up using the single word response time tasks?

Answer 9

1) Fixation position and acuity varies
2) Word skipping
3) Re-fixations
4) Contextual influence
5) Regressions within sentences reflecting comprehension difficulty
6) Variables of integration and predictability

Question 10

What are 4 disadvantages even of using methods like self-paced reading?

Answer 10

Still reliant on button pressing
Unnatural chunking
No regressions permissible
Slower reading rates

Question 11

How does retinal structure limit reading?

Answer 11

We can only view a small portion of the visual field in any level of detail at one time - usually only around 4 or 5 letters around the fixation point and unless particularly short or familiar we have to look directly at each word individually to comprehend meaning

Question 12

What factors have been shown to influence reading behaviour?

Answer 12

Visual factors - word length and spacing

Linguistic factors - word frequency and context/predictability

Question 13

What did Rayner, Sereno and Raney demonstrate in 1996?

Answer 13

Gaze duration increases with word length

Longer words also affected by acuity limitations and show more likelihood of refixation

Question 14

What are 3 experiments done to investigate the effect of spacing on reading behaviour?

Answer 14

Rayner, Fischer and Pollatsek - Removing spaces in English disrupts reading as spaces ordinarily provide segmentation cues
Kohsom and Gobet - There are no spaces in Thai writing ordinarily, but reading times were found to be shorter when spaces added due to aiding guidance of the eyes and disambiguating segmentation
Further studies - Looked into reading behaviour of children (beginner readers), people whose first language is not English and learning of “novel” words

Question 15

Does adding spaces between words in Chinese facilitate or hinder their reading?

Answer 15

The authors investigated whether the introduction of spaces into unspaced Chinese text facilitates reading and whether the word or, alternatively, the character is a unit of information that is of primary importance in Chinese reading.
Global and local measures indicated that sentences with unfamiliar word spaced format were as easy to read as visually familiar unspaced text. Nonword spacing and a space between every character produced longer reading times
The same effect was found when highlighting was used rather than spacing

Question 16

What did Bolota, Pollatsek and Rayner find regarding predictability?

Answer 16

Longer reading times on unpredictable words

Predictability effects indicate that words are processed in relation to sentential context

Question 17

What did Rayner, White, Johnson and Liversedge demonstrate regarding the role of letter position in word recognition?

Answer 17

Using eye tracking experiments, found that transposed letters can be disruptive to word processing, especially when the transposed letters are at the beginning of the word

Question 18

How did this challenge McClelland and Rumelhart’s theory of letter specific coding?

Answer 18

McClelland and Rumelhart suggested fixed letter position coding in their interactive activation model i.e. we are unable to activate a word if the letters are in the wrong order

Question 19

What is the Dual Route Model (Coltheart et al)?

Answer 19

Suggests letter position specific coding - no output when letter positioning is wrong
With transposed letters, “probelm” would be processed as a non-word

Question 20

What is suggested by flexible letter position coding?

Answer 20

Would be able to recognise “problem” from seeing “probelm”
WHITNEY’S SERIOL MODEL - “sequential encoding regulated by inputs to oscillations within units”
Suggests that a stimulus activates multiple potential sequences of letters in different bigrams

Question 21

What is suggested by flexible letter position coding?

Answer 21

Would be able to recognise “problem” from seeing “probelm”
WHITNEY’S SERIOL MODEL - “sequential encoding regulated by inputs to oscillations within units”
Suggests that a stimulus activates multiple potential sequences of letters in different bigrams

Word position and identity and both important in word recognition, but position less so (doesn’t prevent recognition, just slows it down)