Word recognition in normal reading

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Word recognitionin normal reading

• Sara C. Sereno

Collaborators RAs/PGs Paddy
ODonnell Sébastien Miellet Hartmut
Leuthold Graham Scott Christopher Hand
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Word Recognition

• What factors affect word recognition?
• How can word recognition processes be accurately
  measured?
• How can effects be interpreted?

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What factors affect word recognition?

• Orthography of language
• English vs. Hebrew or Japanese
• Intraword (sublexical) variables
• word-initial bi/tri-grams clown vs. dwarf
• spelling-to-sound regularity hint vs. pint
• neighborhood consistency made vs. gave
• morphemes
• prefix vs. pseudo-prefix remind vs. relish
• compound vs. pseudo-compound cowboy vs. carpet

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What factors affect word recognition?

• Word (lexical) variables
• word length duke vs. fisherman
• word frequency student vs. steward
• AoA rabbit vs. violin
• expert vocabulary voxel
• syntactic class open/closed-class A,N,V
• ambiguity bank vs. edge, brim
• concreteness/imagability tree vs. idea
• animacy dog vs. cup
• affective tone love vs. farm vs. fire

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What factors affect word recognition?

• Extraword (supralexical) variables
• Contextual predictability
• Neutral He bought a large plant for his
  garden.
• Biasing Terry went to the new gardening
  centre.
• He bought a large plant for his garden.
• Syntactic complexity
• Trans. Mary took the book
• VERB Mary knew the book
• Intrans. Mary hoped the book

on the table. was good. on the table. was
good. on the table. was good.
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What factors affect word recognition?

• Extraword (supralexical) variables
• Discourse factors
• Focus The dog chased the cat today.
• The cat was chased by the dog today.
• What the dog chased was the cat today.
• It was the cat that was chased by the
  dog today.
• Elaborative inferences anaphora

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What factors affect word recognition?

• Language skill
• beginning (novice) vs. skilled (expert) readers
• normal vs. dyslexic vs. neuropsychological patient

How can word recognition processesbe accurately
measured?
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Measure Task Time Res.
electrical imaging single word
presentation 80-500 ms (EEG, MEG)
word-by-word reading (P1,N1,EPN,N400) Eye
movements in fixation time, location 250
ms normal reading sequence of
EMs Stnd. word recogn. naming 500 ms
priming, masking, lexical decision RT
600 ms lateralized present.
categorization 800 ms blood flow imaging
single word presentation seconds (PET,
fMRI)
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Word-by-word reading 200 ms per word
This
is
a
word
by
word
presentation
of
a
sentence
at
a
fast
reading-like
rate.

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Word-by-word reading 600 ms per word
This
is
a
word
by
word
presentation
of
a
sentence
at
a
slow
rate
typically
used
in
ERP
studies.

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Normal Reading
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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.
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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.
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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.
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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.
16

This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.
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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.
18

This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.
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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.

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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.

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This is an approximation of normal reading in
real time.

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(No Transcript)
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The importance of making eye movements in normal
reading

• Cond1 There was a box of
• Cond2 There was an enormous box of
• Cond1 She saw a cat in the
• Cond2 She saw a cup in the
• The measure affects what is being measured
• Perception of text influences how EMs made.
• Location/duration of EMs affect perception.

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How can effects be interpreted?

• Theoretical approaches
• Interactive (top-down) vs. Modular (bottom-up)
• Additive factors

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How can effects be interpreted?

• Modelling

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How can effects be interpreted?

• Modelling
• Repeated measures multiple regression analyses
• Oculomotor-related factors
• launch distance to word
• location of fixation within word
• number of fixations on word
• word length
• word frequency
• contextual predictability
• Language-related factors

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Factors Measures Approach
orthography bi-/tri-grams regularity neighborhood
morphology length frequency jargon word
class ambiguity imagability animacy emotionality p
redictability syntactic prefs. focus inference ana
phora skill
ERPs word-by-word (slow) presentation Eye
movements normal reading EM-ERP co-registrat
ion?
Additive factors Repeated measures multiple
regression
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Distributed hierarchical visual processing in
primates
higher-level semantics syntax meanings word
forms letters features
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Why?

• Precisely delineate the time course of different
  levels of linguistic processing.
• Help inform a temporally realistic neural
  circuitry of normal reading.

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Measurement
EMs best on-line measure of visual word
recognition in the context of normal reading
ERPs best real-time measure of brain
activity associated with the perceptual and
cognitive processing of words
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(Sereno Rayner, Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
2003)
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Sereno, Rayner, Posner (1998).
NeuroReport. Sereno, Brewer, ODonnell
(2003). Psych. Sci.
(Sereno Rayner, Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
2003)