When orthography is not enough: the effect of lexical stress in lexical decision.

Three lexical decision experiments were carried out in Italian, in order to verify if stress dominance (the most frequent stress type) and consistency (the proportion and number of existent words sharing orthographic ending and stress pattern) had an effect on polysyllabic word recognition. Two factors were manipulated: whether the target word carried stress on the penultimate (dominant; graNIta, seNIle 'slush, senile') or on the antepenultimate (non-dominant) syllable (MISsile, BIbita 'missile, drink'), and whether the stress neighborhood was consistent (graNIta, MISsile) or inconsistent (seNIle, BIbita) with the word\u2019s stress pattern. In Experiment 1 words were mixed with nonwords sharing the word endings, which made words and nonwords more similar to each other. In Experiment 2 words and nonwords were presented in lists blocked for stress pattern. In Experiment 3 we used a new set of nonwords, which included endings with (stress) ambiguous neighborhoods and/or with low number of neighbors, and which were overall less similar to words. In all three experiments there was an advantage for words with penultimate (dominant) stress, and no main effect of stress neighborhood. However, the dominant stress advantage decreased in Experiments 2 and 3. Finally, in Experiment 4 the same materials used in Experiment 1 were also used in a reading aloud task, showing a significant consistency effect, but no dominant stress advantage. The influence of stress information in Italian word recognition is discussed

Reading segments is not reading words: Comment on Kawamoto et al. (2014)

Word production involves computing the sound of a word from its concept or visually presented form. To perform such process multiple operations are required, including lexical access, word form encoding, and articulation. With regard to articulation, a critical issue is understanding which is the minimal planning unit (henceforth MPU) to address articulatory programs and start motor implementation. Kawamoto and colleagues (2014, QJEP) have recently proposed that the MPU consists in the word initial segment. The segment as MPU hypothesis is winsome, but it is difficult to substantiate. In this commentary, we argue that, in addition to some methodological concerns, at least three issues may challenge this hypothesis. A first challenge to the segment as MPU hypothesis is how to reconcile it with the typical articulatory behavior shown by readers. A second issue questioning the generalizability of the segment as MPU hypothesis is the phonetic realization of stress in polysyllabic words, which in many languages constitute a great part of the lexicon. A third issue deals with the opacity of the orthography-to-phonology mapping. Overall, our observations suggest that the segment as MPU hypothesis is more an exceptional behavior than the behavior usually occurring at the phonology-to-phonetics interface of the reading system. We show that several findings suggest that the phonology-to-phonetics interface adopts units larger than the segment. The latter proposal can account for a bulk of phenomena such as those related to orthography-to-phonology opacity, stress assignment, and co-articulation

Priming lexical stress in reading Italian aloud.

Two naming experiments using lexical priming were conducted to investigate how stress information is processed in reading Italian aloud. In the experiments, word primes and targets either shared the stress pattern, or they had different stress patterns. The hypothesis was that lexical activation of the prime would favor the assignment of a congruent stress to the target word. Results show that participants were faster in naming low-frequency target words that had the same stress pattern as the prime, than in naming targets with a different stress than the prime. Similar effects were found on word targets that were included in lists in which primes and targets had the same stress type (experiment 1), and in lists that were mixed for stress type and congruency (experiment 2). The results indicate that, in single word reading, metrical information about stress position is activated in the lexicon, autonomously from phonemic segmental information

The developmental trend of transposed letters effects in masked priming

In the current study, we investigated the development of trans- posed letter (TL) priming effects with masked priming. Recent studies have reported different and contrasting results concerning the age at which TL priming effects first appear and whether they tend to decline or increase with age. One of the aims of this study was to investigate the developmental trend of orthographic mech- anisms underlying the TL effects in Italian. We tested three groups of children (second, third, and fifth graders) and a group of adults with a sandwich masked priming procedure, presenting lists of tar- get words preceded by TL or replaced letter (RL) primes. TLs and RLs were either at the beginning (second\u2013third letters) or the end (fourth\u2013sixth letters) of primes in order to see whether the TL priming effect varied according to position in the letter string. We found that TL priming effects increased with age in both accu- racy and latency. No effect of position was found. The results are discussed in light of a possible difference in the development of orthographic mechanisms depending on the transparency of the language

Stress affects articulation planning in reading aloud.

Three experiments of pseudoword reading assessed whether stress assignment affects reading aloud at the level of articulation planning. In experiment 1 (immediate reading) both stimulus length (in syllables) and stress type affected reading latency and accuracy. Italian pseudowords were named faster and more accurately when they were assigned stress on the antepenultimate than on the penultimate syllable. In experiment 2 (delayed reading) reading aloud of the same stimuli was not affected by length but was still affected by stress type, with shorter latencies for pseudowords stressed on the antepenultimate syllable. Experiment 3 replicated the results of the first two experiments with new materials and with a tightly controlled procedure. These results indicate that stress assignment exerts an effect in a processing component where articulation is planned as articulation can not start until stress is assigned. Our results also suggest that, in reading aloud, the minimal planning unit for articulation is smaller than the whole stimulus, including the first syllable up to the stressed unit

Stress assignment in reading Italian: Friendship outweighs dominance

Stress assignment to polysyllabic words is the only aspect of the pronunciation of written Italian that cannot be predicted by rule. It could be a function of stress dominance in the language or of stress neighbourhood (i.e., the number of words sharing ending and stress pattern). Two experiments investigated stress assignment in Italian adult and most importantly young readers. Word frequency and number of stress friends influenced reading times and accuracy, outweighing any effect of stress dominance. In the presence of a majority of stress friends, the reading of low-frequency words was only affected by stress neighbourhood. The effects were the same in fourth graders and adult readers. It is argued that distributional information based on the number of stress friends - rather than stress dominance - is the most effective factor in assigning stress to words in reading

Stress assignment in reading Italian polysyllabic pseudowords.

In four naming experiments we investigated how Italian readers assign stress to pseudowords. We assessed whether participants assign stress following distributional information such as stress neighborhood (the proportion and number of existent words sharing orthographic ending and stress pattern) and whether such distributional information affects naming speed. Experiments 1 and 2 tested how readers assign stress to pseudowords. The results showed that participants assign stress on the basis of the pseudowords\u27 stress neighborhood, but only when this orthographic/phonological information is widely represented in the lexicon. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the naming speed of pseudowords with different stress patterns. Participants were faster in reading pseudowords with antepenultimate than with penultimate stress. The effect was not driven by distributional information, but it was related to the stage of articulation planning. Overall, the experiments showed that, under certain conditions, readers assign stress using orthographic/phonological distributional information. However, the distributional information does not speed up pseudoword naming, which is affected by stress computation at the level of the articulation planning of the stimulus. It is claimed that models of reading aloud and speech production should be merged at the level of phonological encoding, when segmental and metrical information are assembled and articulation is planned

Stress assignment in the development of reading aloud: Nonword priming effects on Italian children.

Two experiments investigated the development of two aspects related to stress assignment in reading. First, we tested whether the role of distributional knowledge concerning stress changes with the development of the reading system; second, we tested whether stress information is computed independently of phonemic information since the first stages of reading acquisition. We ran two identical experiments in Italian, one with children of two age levels (second and fourth grades) and one with adults. Results showed that older children behave similarly to adults, but younger children do not. Differently from the advanced readers, younger children use more general distributional knowledge about stress and are not able to compute stress information apart from phonemes. Taken together, our results suggest that the stress subsystem, and in particular the mechanisms working at the level of the phonological buffer are not fully developed during the first stages of reading

Seeing emotions, reading emotions: behavioral and ERPs evidence of the regulation of pictures and words

Background: Whilst there has been extensive study of the mechanisms underlying the regulation for pictures, the ability and the mechanisms beyond the regulation of words remains to be clarified. Similarly, the effect of strategy when applying a regulatory process is still poorly explored. The present study seeks to elucidate these issues comparing the effect of regulation and of strategy to both neutral and emotional words and pictures. Methodology/Principal Findings: Thirty young adults applied the strategy of distancing to the emotions elicited by unpleasant and neutral pictures and words while their subjective ratings and ERPs were recorded. At a behavioral level, participants successfully regulated the arousal and the valence of both pictures and words. At a neural level, unpleasant pictures produced an increase in the late positive potential modulated during the regulate condition. Unpleasant linguistic stimuli elicited a posterior negativity as compared to neutral stimuli, but no effect of regulation on ERP was detectable. More importantly, the effect of strategy independently of stimulus type, produced a significant larger Stimulus Preceding Negativity. Dipole reconstruction localized this effect in the middle frontal areas of the brain. Conclusions: As such, these new psychophysiological findings might help to understand how pictures and words can be regulated by distancing in daily life and clinical contexts, and the neural bases of the effect of strategy for which we suggest an integrative model

Foreign to whom? Constraining the moral foreign language effect on bilinguals' language experience

The moral foreign language effect (MFLE) describes how people’s decisions may change when a moral dilemma is presented in either their native (NL) or foreign language (FL). Growing attention is being directed to unpacking what aspects of bilingualism may influence the MFLE, though with mixed or inconclusive results. The current study aims to bridge this gap by adopting a conceptualization of bilingualism that frames this construct as a composite and continuous measure. In a between-group analysis, we asked 196 Italian–English bilinguals to perform a moral dilemmas task in either their NL (i.e., Italian) or FL (i.e., English). In a within-group analysis, we evaluated the effects of FL age of acquisition, FL proficiency, and language dominance – all measured as continuous variables – on moral decision-making. Overall, findings indicate that differences within bilinguals’ language experience impact moral decisions in an FL. However, the effect of the linguistic factors considered was not ubiquitous across dilemmas, and not always emerged into a MFLE. In light of these results, our study addresses the importance of treating bilingualism as multidimensional, rather than a unitary variable. It also discusses the need to reconceptualize the FLE and its implications on moral decision-making