Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Papers 162–168 Saturday Morning
Reading
Conference Rooms B&C, Saturday Morning, 8:00–9:20
Chaired by Simon P. Liversedge, University of Durham
8:00–8:15 (162)
Reading Transposed Text: The Importance of Word Initial Letters.
SARAH J. WHITE, University of Durham, REBECCA L. JOHNSON
& KEITH RAYNER, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, & SIMON P.
LIVERSEDGE, University of Durham (read by Simon P. Liversedge)—
An eye-tracking experiment is presented in which participants read
text including transposed adjacent letters. Participants read single sentences
within which all words five or more letters long contained
transposed letters. Transpositions were either external (e.g., xeternal)
or internal (e.g., itnernal) and at either the beginning (e.g., xeternal)
or the end (e.g., internla) of words. We also included a word frequency
manipulation. For all eye movement measures, external transpositions
were more disruptive than internal transpositions. For several measures,
there was also an interaction such that transpositions at word beginnings
were more disruptive than transpositions at word endings for external,
but not for internal, letters. There was also a robust frequency
effect regardless of the type of transposition. Our results suggest that
word initial letters are very important for word recognition during normal
reading, where words are preprocessed prior to fixation.
8:20–8:35 (163)
Orthographic Familiarity and Word Frequency: Implications for Eye
Movement Control During Reading. SARAH J. WHITE, University of
Durham—The variables of word frequency and orthographic familiarity
were independently manipulated in an eye movement reading study.
The critical words were frequent and orthographically familiar (e.g.,
town), infrequent and orthographically familiar (e.g., cove), or infrequent
and orthographically unfamiliar (e.g., quay). For each item, critical
words from each of the three conditions were embedded in the
same sentential frame up to and including the word after the critical
word. For orthographically familiar words, reading times were longer
on infrequent than on frequent words, and frequent words were more
likely to be skipped than infrequent words. Lexical characteristics of
words directly influenced saccade programming. Orthographic familiarity
had effects on early reading time measures, whereas word frequency
also influenced later measures of processing. In addition, there
were parafoveal-on-foveal effects of orthographic familiarity, but critically,
not of word frequency. These results are discussed in relation
to models of eye movement control during reading.
8:40–8:55 (164)
Distributed Processing During Eye Fixations in Reading: Data and
Model. REINHOLD KLIEGL & RALF ENGBERT, University of Potsdam—Fixation
durations in reading are jointly influenced by visual
acuity constraints and processing difficulty. Frequency, predictability,
and length of fixated words are established contributors to fixation durations
in reading. Here, we show that frequency, predictability, and
length of neighboring words, as well as incoming and outgoing saccade
amplitudes and fixation position in the current word, also influence the
duration. Sentence-reading data are reported from 222 readers (159,888
fixations). Novel results are simultaneous effects of last and next word
frequency and predictability, as well as replications of four disputed
parafoveal-on-foveal effects. Our computational model of saccade generation,
SWIFT, reproduces the observed immediacy, lag, and successor
effects. Novel lag effects are reproduced, assuming (1) lexical processing
tied to limits of the perceptual span and (2) delayed inhibition
of saccade programs due to foveal-processing difficulty. Novel successor
effects are due to spatial selection effects in the perceptual span.
9:00–9:15 (165)
A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Visual Word Form Effects in Normal
Reading. RALPH R. RADACH, Florida State University, CHRISTIAN
VORSTIUS, Florida Center for Reading Research, & ARTHUR M.
26
JACOBS, Free University of Berlin (sponsored by K. Anders Ericsson)—
Despite growing interest in the role of visual word form information
(e.g., word shape) in letter and word processing, its role in continuous
reading is not well understood. Noun capitalization in written German
offers a unique possibility of manipulating visual word form features in
a way that is not confounded with other orthographic and lexical word
properties. In one experiment, participants read sentences containing
seven-letter target nouns with capital or noncapital initial letters. Saccadecontingent
display changes were used to present nouns parafoveally in
irregular noncapitalized format. Results show significant preview benefits
of capitalization, confirming the role of word form information in
early stages of word processing. A second experiment involved extended
training of reading in capitalized and noncapitalized formats with native
speakers of German versus English. Results allow us to separate influences
of general word form familiarity from specific effects of capitalization
on word recognition and sentence-level processing.
Word Processing
Grand Ballroom Centre, Saturday Morning, 10:00–12:00
Chaired by Ken McRae, University of Western Ontario
10:00–10:15 (166)
Distinguishing Features Play a Privileged Role in Word Meaning
Computation. KEN MCRAE & CHRIS MCNORGAN, University of
Western Ontario, & GEORGE S. CREE, University of Toronto, Scarborough—Distinguishing
features (features that occur in very few
concepts) play an important role in theories of categorization and
category-specific semantic deficits. We present evidence that distinguishing
features play a privileged role in the computation of word
meaning. In Experiment 1, a feature verification paradigm, participants
responded more quickly to distinguishing features than to shared features
when those features preceded a concept name, suggesting that
distinguishing features activate relevant concepts more quickly than
do shared features. In Experiment 2, participants were faster to verify
distinguishing features than shared features when they followed
the concept name, suggesting that distinguishing features are activated
more quickly than shared features from a concept name. The effects
were robust for both living and nonliving thing concepts across multiple
SOAs. We use a connectionist attractor model of semantic memory
to explain why distinguishing features have this privileged status
and use the model to simulate the findings from the two experiments.
10:20–10:35 (167)
Transfer of Meaning Selection. DAVID S. GORFEIN, LESLEY S.
BLACK, & EMILY A. EDWARDS, University of Texas, Arlington—A
point of theoretical contention in the lexical ambiguity literature is the
nature of the process that selects appropriate-to-the-context meaning
for ambiguous words. The present study examines the effect of initially
selecting a secondary meaning for both normatively balanced and unbalanced
homographs when the homograph reoccurs in a new task. The
study was designed to test the breadth of the effects of such meaning
selection. Specifically, homographs originally primed by pictures related
to their secondary meanings in a picture location task are repeated in
a variety of transfer tasks ranging from language tasks, such as sentence
sensibility judgment, to episodic memory tasks, such as free recall.
Theoretical models that require suppression/inhibition processes
are contrasted with models that do not require inhibition processes.
Implications of word encoding are discussed for memory tasks.
10:40–10:55 (168)
Experience Provides Sound Advice: Individual Differences in Experience
Explain Differential Cue Use in Language Comprehension.
THOMAS A. FARMER & MORTEN H. CHRISTIANSEN, Cornell
University, & KAREN A. KEMTES, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
(read by Morten H. Christiansen)—In Study 1, we demonstrate that
phonological typicality—the degree to which the sound properties of an
individual word are typical of other words in its lexical category—can