1,721,022 research outputs found
Accento e sillabe nei modelli computazionali della lettura: è così semplice leggere unità polisillabiche?
No full textStress priming and syllable frequency interact while reading aloud
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
L'intervento delle sillabe nei processi di produzione e riconoscimento visivo delle parole
No full textSerial mechanism in transposed letters effects: A developmental study
No full textThe study describes the developmental trend of transposed letters (TL) effects in a lexical decision task. The TL effect refers to the fact that nonwords derived from words by transposing two middle letters (e.g., talbe from table) are responded to more slowly than control nonwords in which two letters are replaced (RL [replaced letters]; e.g., tafde). We measured this effect in three groups of children (second, third, and fifth graders) and a group of adults. Length was manipulated with short letter strings (four or five letters) and long letter strings (seven or eight letters). In long letter strings, position of letter transposition/replacement was also manipulated; half of the stimuli contained the TL/RL toward the beginning of the string and half toward the end of the string. The results showed that the size of the TL effect increased with age and that this developmental pattern was more marked for transpositions involving the final part of the word. The results suggest that with the increase in reading ability, the reading system relies more strongly on a coarse orthographic representation in which letter position is not precisely coded. Furthermore, the effect of position suggests that a serial mechanism is used to scan the letter string. This determines the extent to which nonwords activate the base words, modulating the influence of lexical effects in nonword decisions. The nature of this effect is discussed
Stress affects articulation planning in reading aloud.
Full text linkThree 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 still affects articulatory planning in reading aloud: A reply to White and Besner (2016)
No full textIn their comment, White and Besner (2016) argued against our conclusion that stress assignment may affect polysyllable pseudoword reading and concluded that, currently, we do not know whether the effect of stress position is solid and reliable. White and Besner stated that because the experiments reported in Sulpizio, Spinelli, and Burani (2015) have methodological problems, our conclusion is grounded on weak evidence. In this reply, we present further analyses of our data that overcome the methodological weakness highlighted by White and Besner. The results of these new analyses consistently mirror those reported by Sulpizio and colleagues (2015) and speak in favor of the view that, in reading Italian pseudowords aloud, stress assignment affects articulatory planning of the stimulus
Conosco persone omosessuali una ricerca esplorativa degli effetti del contatto sull'omofobia e sostegno ai diritti LGBT in Italia
No full textResearch, mostly conducted in US, has shown that contact with homosexuals is associated with less sexual prejudice. The present research aims at investigating this link in an Italian sample and by distinguishing between quantity of contacts and contact closeness. The study involved 125 heterosexual individuals - who reported at least a contact with a homosexual - and examined several indicators of sexual prejudice. Results showed that contact closeness, rather than quantity of contacts, is associated with lower level of homophobic attitudes toward homosexuals and with higher support for the extension of equal rights to LGBT people (i.e. same-sex parenting). Differently, contact was not related to the perception of homosexuals as target of discrimination. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings and the role of contacts on homophobic prejudice are discussed
From sound to meaning : phonology-to-semantics mapping in visual word recognition
No full textIn the present study, the role of phonological information in visual word recognition is investigated by adopting a large-scale data-driven approach that exploits a new consistency measure based on distributional semantics methods. A recent study by Marelli, Amenta, and Crepaldi (2015) showed that the consistency between an orthographic string and the meanings to which it is associated in a large corpus is a relevant predictor in lexical decision experiments. Exploiting irregular mappings between orthography and phonology in English, we were able to compute a phonology-to-semantics consistency measure that dissociates from its orthographic counterpart and tested both measures on lexical decision data taken from the British Lexicon Project (Keuleers et al., 2012). Results showed that both orthography and phonology are activated during visual word recognition. However, their contribution is crucially determined by the extent to which they are informative of the word semantics, and phonology plays a crucial role in accessing word meaning
Early markers of lexical stress in visual word recognition
No full textThe goal of the present study was to investigate the time-course of suprasegmental information in visual word rec- ognition. To this aim we measured event-related brain poten- tials (ERPs) during a simple lexical decision task in Italian. Two factors were manipulated: Stress dominance (the most frequent stress type) and stress neighborhood consistency (the proportion and number of existent words sharing ortho- graphic ending and stress pattern). Participants were presented with target words either bearing dominant (on the penultimate syllable; 'graNIta,' 'seNIle,' slush, senile) or non-dominant stress (on the antepenultimate syllable; 'MISsile,' 'BIbita,' mis- sile, drink), and either having a consistent (graNIta, MISsile) or an inconsistent stress neighborhood (seNIle, BIbita). Our results showed in the initial stages of processing an effect that we interpreted as an early orthographic marker of stress neigh- borhood in interaction with dominance. Later, from 250 ms after target onset, a marker of the lexical stress difference also emerged. The role of stress assignment in word recognition is discussed
The segment-to-frame association in word reading: early effects of the interaction between segmental and suprasegmental information
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