105 research outputs found
Stress Priming in Reading and the Selective Modulation of Lexical and Sub-Lexical Pathways.
No full textFour experiments employed a priming methodology to investigate different mechanisms of stress assignment and how
they are modulated by lexical and sub-lexical mechanisms in reading aloud in Italian. Lexical stress is unpredictable in
Italian, and requires lexical look-up. The most frequent stress pattern (Dominant) is on the penultimate syllable [laVOro
(work)], while stress on the antepenultimate syllable [MAcchina (car)] is relatively less frequent (non-Dominant). Word and
pseudoword naming responses primed by words with non-dominant stress – which require whole-word knowledge to be
read correctly – were compared to those primed by nonwords. Percentage of errors to words and percentage of dominant
stress responses to nonwords were measured. In Experiments 1 and 2 stress errors increased for non-dominant stress words
primed by nonwords, as compared to when they were primed by words. The results could be attributed to greater
activation of sub-lexical codes, and an associated tendency to assign the dominant stress pattern by default in the nonword
prime condition. Alternatively, they may have been the consequence of prosodic priming, inducing more errors on trials in
which the stress pattern of primes and targets was not congruent. The two interpretations were investigated in Experiments
3 and 4. The results overall suggested a limited role of the default metrical pattern in word pronunciation, and showed clear
effect of prosodic priming, but only when the sub-lexical mechanism prevailed
Running head: AGE OF ACQUISITION Age of Acquisition 1 Age of acquisition effects in reading aloud: Tests of cumulative frequency and frequency trajectory
No full textSeveral studies have reported that the age at which a word is learned affects skilled reading. This age of acquisition effect is potentially important for theories of reading and learning. The effect has been difficult to pin down, however, because the age at which a word is learned is correlated with many other lexical properties. Zevin and Seidenberg (2002) analyzed these phenomena using connectionist models that distinguished between cumulative frequency (the total number of times a word is experienced) and frequency trajectory (the distribution these experiences over time). The models prompted a reevaluation of the empirical literature on this topic. The present research tested and confirmed three behavioral predictions derived from these models. First, cumulative frequency has an impact on skilled word naming, more so than standard measures of frequency derived from norms such as Kucera and Francis (1967). Second, frequency trajectory affects age of acquisition: the timing of exposure to words affects how rapidly they are learned. However, frequency trajectory does not affect skilled reading aloud, because the consistencies in mapping between spelling and sound eventually wash out the effects of early differences in frequency of exposure. Thus, in skilled performance the timing of exposure to words is less important than the amount of exposure. The results clarify the conditions under which age-dependent learning effects occur in reading aloud. Age of acquisition effects in reading aloud: Tests of cumulative frequency and frequency trajectory The possibility that some aspects of language learning may be age dependent, in that they can only be fully mastered during a limited window of opportunity in early development, has been widely discussed (e.g., Doupe & Kuhl, 1..
Statistical learning of syllable sequences as trajectories through a perceptual similarity space
No full textLearning from sequential statistics is a general capacity common to many model systems. One form of statistical learning (SL) – learning to segment “words’ from continuous streams of speech syllables in which the only segmentation cue is ostensibly the transitional (or conditional) probability from one syllable to the next – has been studied in great detail. Typically, this phenomenon is modeled as the calculation of probabilities over discrete, featureless units. Here we present an alternative model, in which sequences are learned as trajectories through a similarity space. A simple recurrent network that coded syllables using representations capture the similarity relations among syllables correctly simulated the result of a classic SL study. We then used the simulations to identify a set of “words” that produces the reverse of the typical SL, i.e., part-words are predicted to be more familiar than words. Results from two experiments are consistent with simulation results
Domain General Change Detection Accounts for“Dishabituation” Effects in Temporal–Parietal Regions in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies of Speech Perception
No full textDomain General Change Detection Accounts for "Dishabituation" Effects in Temporal-Parietal Regions in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies of Speech Perception
No full textFunctional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI) studies of speech sound categorization often compare conditions in which a stimulus is presented repeatedly to conditions in which multiple stimuli are presented. This approach has established that a set of superior temporal and inferior parietal regions respond more strongly to conditions containing stimulus change. Here, we examine whether this contrast is driven by habituation to a repeating condition or by selective responding to change. Experiment 1 directly tests this by comparing the observed response to long trains of stimuli against a constructed hemodynamic response modeling the hypothesis that no habituation occurs. The results are consistent with the view that enhanced response to conditions involving phonemic variability reflect change detection. In a second experiment, the specificity of these responses to linguistically relevant stimulus variability was studied by including a condition in which the talker, rather than phonemic category, was variable from stimulus to stimulus. In this context, strong change detection responses were observed to changes in talker, but not to changes in phoneme category. The results prompt a reconsideration of two assumptions common to fMRI studies of speech sound categorization: they suggest that temporoparietal responses in passive paradigms such as those used here are better characterized as reflecting change detection than habituation, and that their apparent selectivity to speech sound categories may reflect a more general preference for variability in highly salient or behaviorally relevant stimulus dimensions
Native and non-native speech sound processing and the neural mismatch responses: A longitudinal study on classroom-based foreign language learning
No full textLearning a foreign language in a natural immersion context with high exposure to the new language has been shown to change the way speech sounds of that language are processed at the neural level. It remains unclear, however, to what extent this is also the case for classroom-based foreign language learning, particularly in children. To this end, we presented a mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment during EEG recordings as part of a longitudinal developmental study: 38 monolingual (Swiss-) German speaking children (7.5 years) were tested shortly before they started to learn English at school and followed up one year later. Moreover, 22 (Swiss-) German adults were recorded. Instead of the originally found positive mismatch response in children, an MMN emerged when applying a high-pass filter of 3 Hz. The overlap of a slow-wave positivity with the MMN indicates that two concurrent mismatch processes were elicited in children. The children's MMN in response to the non-native speech contrast was smaller compared to the native speech contrast irrespective of foreign language learning, suggesting that no additional neural resources were committed to processing the foreign language speech sound after one year of classroom-based learning
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Beyond the statistics: Questioning the arbitrariess of the "words" in statistical learning paradigms
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Statistical learning of syllable sequences as trajectories through a perceptual similarity space
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Statistical learning of auditory patterns as trajectories through a perceptually defined similarity space
No full textMost accounts of statistical learning (e.g., Saffran et al., 1996) assume that the learner computes cooccurrence
statistics over units, such as syllables, that abstract away from the physical features of the input. This assumption need not hold
when the units are underlearned, unfamiliar, or uncategorizable. We tested statistical learning with variable, unfamiliar units
and show that if the featural variation is small, adults treat words differently from part-words and non-words, as if learning were
occurring over abstract units. When the featural variation is large, and the categorical boundaries are unclear, participants can
still learn statistical regularities defined over trajectories through this space: Words, part words and even non-words that follow
trajectories consistent with the familiarization set are rated as equally familiar, whereas non-words that take trajectories opposite
the familiarized direction are rated as less familiar. Conceiving of statistical learning over trajectories through perceptual space
explains the results under both conditions
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