Cascadedness in Chinese written word production

In written word production, is activation transmitted from lexical-semantic selection to orthographic encoding in a serial or cascaded fashion? Very few previous studies have addressed this issue, and the existing evidence comes from languages with alphabetic orthographic systems. We report a study in which Chinese participants were presented with coloured line drawings of objects and were instructed to write the name of the colour while attempting to ignore the object. Significant priming was found when on a trial, the written response shared an orthographic radical with the written name of the object. This finding constitutes clear evidence that task-irrelevant lexical codes activate their corresponding orthographic representation, and hence suggests that activation flows in a cascaded fashion within the written production system. Additionally, the results speak to how the time interval between processing of target and distractor dimensions affects and modulates the emergence of orthographic facilitation effects

Effects of conflict in cognitive control:Evidence from mouse tracking

It has long been debated whether the “congruency sequence effect (CSE)” in conflict tasks such as Flanker could reflect adaptive control. The current study used “mouse tracking” to tackle the issue in a combination of three conflict tasks (i.e., Flanker, Simon, and Spatial Stroop tasks). Congruency effects from previous and current trials emerged in latencies as well as curvature of movement trajectories in all three tasks. Critically, movement initiation times were affected only by congruency on previous but not on current trials. A further analysis showed that even when initiation time on the previous trials was taken into account, a subtle but highly significant effect of conflict arising from trial N–1 on initiation times remained. Although not necessarily implying “conflict adaptation,” i.e., a dynamic up- and downregulation of cognitive control in response to a recent conflict, our finding indicates a specific sensitivity to the presence or absence of recent “conflict” in the cognitive environment

Seriality of semantic and phonological processes during overt speech in Mandarin as revealed by event-related brain potentials

How is information transmitted across semantic and phonological levels in spoken word production? Recent evidence from speakers of Western languages such as English and Dutch suggests non-discrete transmission, but it is not clear whether this view can be generalized to other languages such as Mandarin, given potential differences in phonological encoding across languages. The present study used Mandarin speakers and combined a behavioral picture-word interference task with event-related potentials. The design factorially crossed semantic and phonological relatedness. Results showed semantic and phonological effects both in behavioral and electrophysiological measurements, with statistical additivity in latencies, and discrete time signatures (250-450 ms and 450-600 ms after picture onset for the semantic and phonological condition, respectively). Overall, results suggest that in Mandarin spoken production, information is transmitted from semantic to phonological levels in a sequential fashion. Hence, temporal signatures associated with spoken word production might differ depending on target language. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

The role of valence in word processing:Evidence from Lexical Decision and Emotional Stroop tasks

It is widely accepted that the valence of a word (neutral, positive, or negative) influences lexical processing, yet data from the commonly used lexical decision and emotional Stroop tasks has yielded inconsistent findings regarding the direction of this influence. One critical obstacle to investigating the independent effects of valence is the matching of emotional and neutral stimuli on the lexical, sublexical, and conceptual characteristics known to influence word recognition. The second obstacle is that the cognitive processes which lead to a lexical decision and a colour naming response are unobservable from the response latency measures typically gathered. The present study compiled a set of neutral, positive, and negative words matched triplet-wise on 26 influential characteristics. The novel “mouse tracking” technique was used to analyse the development of responses to these materials in variants of the lexical decision and emotional Stroop task. A conventional key-press emotional Stroop task is also reported. Results revealed a significant processing advantage for positive words over negative and neutral words in the lexical decision task, whereas valence alone did not produce any significant effects in the emotional Stroop task. The discrepancy between the effects of valence across these different tasks is discussed. We also suggest that previous conflicting findings may be confounded by unmatched emotional and neutral stimuli, thus inflating the potential effects of valence

Parallel processing of semantics and phonology in spoken production:Evidence from blocked cyclic picture naming and EEG

Spoken language production involves lexical-semantic access and phonological encoding. A theoretically important question concerns the relative time course of these two cognitive processes. The predominant view has been that semantic and phonological codes are accessed in successive stages. However, recent evidence seems difficult to reconcile with a sequential view but rather suggests that both types of codes are accessed in parallel. Here, we used ERPs combined with the "blocked cyclic naming paradigm" in which items overlapped either semantically or phonologically. Behaviorally, both semantic and phonological overlap caused interference relative to unrelated baseline conditions. Crucially, ERP data demonstrated that the semantic and phonological effects emerged at a similar latency (similar to 180 msec after picture onset) and within a similar time window (180-380 msec). These findings suggest that access to phonological information takes place at a relatively early stage during spoken planning, largely in parallel with semantic processing

A joint investigation of facilitation and interference effects of semantic and phonological similarityin a continuous naming task

Semantic and phonological similarity effects provide critical constraints on the mechanisms underlying language production. In the present study, we jointly investigated effects of semantic and phonological similarity using the continuous naming task. In the semantic condition, Chinese Mandarin speakers named a list of pictures composed of 12 semantic category sets with 5 items from each semantic category, while in the phonological condition, they named a list of pictures from 12 phonological sets of 5 items sharing a spoken syllable. Related pictures occurred on adjacent trials, or were separated by 2, 4, or 6 unrelated pictures. Similar results were found across the semantic and phonological conditions: naming was facilitated by the directly preceding production of a related picture. For nonconsecutive related responses, naming latency increased linearly as a function of the number of preceding production instances of related pictures. Parallel patterns of facilitation and interference effects arising from semantic and phonological similarity suggest universal principles which govern language production

Visual speech alters the discrimination and identification of non-intact auditory speech in children with hearing loss

OBJECTIVES: Understanding spoken language is an audiovisual event that depends critically on the ability to discriminate and identify phonemes yet we have little evidence about the role of early auditory experience and visual speech on the development of these fundamental perceptual skills. Objectives of this research were to determine 1) how visual speech influences phoneme discrimination and identification; 2) whether visual speech influences these two processes in a like manner, such that discrimination predicts identification; and 3) how the degree of hearing loss affects this relationship. Such evidence is crucial for developing effective intervention strategies to mitigate the effects of hearing loss on language development. METHODS: Participants were 58 children with early-onset sensorineural hearing loss (CHL, 53% girls, M = 9;4 yrs) and 58 children with normal hearing (CNH, 53% girls, M = 9;4 yrs). Test items were consonant-vowel (CV) syllables and nonwords with intact visual speech coupled to non-intact auditory speech (excised onsets) as, for example, an intact consonant/rhyme in the visual track (Baa or Baz) coupled to non-intact onset/rhyme in the auditory track (/–B/aa or /–B/az). The items started with an easy-to-speechread /B/ or difficult-to-speechread /G/ onset and were presented in the auditory (static face) vs. audiovisual (dynamic face) modes. We assessed discrimination for intact vs. non-intact different pairs (e.g., Baa:/–B/aa). We predicted that visual speech would cause the non-intact onset to be perceived as intact and would therefore generate more same—as opposed to different—responses in the audiovisual than auditory mode. We assessed identification by repetition of nonwords with non-intact onsets (e.g., /–B/az). We predicted that visual speech would cause the non-intact onset to be perceived as intact and would therefore generate more Baz—as opposed to az— responses in the audiovisual than auditory mode. RESULTS: Performance in the audiovisual mode showed more same responses for the intact vs. non-intact different pairs (e.g., Baa:/–B/aa) and more intact onset responses for nonword repetition (Baz for/–B/az). Thus visual speech altered both discrimination and identification in the CHL—to a large extent for the /B/ onsets but only minimally for the /G/ onsets. The CHL identified the stimuli similarly to the CNH but did not discriminate the stimuli similarly. A bias-free measure of the children’s discrimination skills (i.e., d’ analysis) revealed that the CHL had greater difficulty discriminating intact from non-intact speech in both modes. As the degree of HL worsened, the ability to discriminate the intact vs. non-intact onsets in the auditory mode worsened. Discrimination ability in CHL significantly predicted their identification of the onsets—even after variation due to the other variables was controlled. CONCLUSIONS: These results clearly established that visual speech can fill in non-intact auditory speech, and this effect, in turn, made the non-intact onsets more difficult to discriminate from intact speech and more likely to be perceived as intact. Such results 1) demonstrate the value of visual speech at multiple levels of linguistic processing and 2) support intervention programs that view visual speech as a powerful asset for developing spoken language in CHL

Syllables and phonemes as planning units in Mandarin Chinese spoken word production:Evidence from ERPs

Speakers of different languages might rely on differential phonological units when planning spoken output. In the present experiment, we investigated the role of phonemes, as well as the relative time course of syllabic vs phonemic encoding, in Mandarin Chinese word production. A form preparation task was combined with encephalography (EEG). In Experiment 1, word-initial phonemic overlap was manipulated; in Experiment 2, overlap was either in terms of phonemes or of syllables. Priming in latencies was found for syllabic but not for phonemic overlap. Phonemic overlap modulated ERPs in a 230-300 ms time window (range across Experiment 1 and 2) whereas syllabic overlap was found in a 200-280 ms time window. These results show that both phonemes and syllables are important planning units for Chinese speakers, and the relatively similar time course of activation provides important constraints on psycholinguistic models of Chinese spoken production. (143 words