This article presents the ENglish Reading Online (ENRO) project that offers data on English reading and listening comprehension from 7,338 university‐level advanced learners and native speakers of ...English representing 19 countries. The database also includes estimates of reading rate and seven component skills of English, including vocabulary, spelling, and grammar, as well as rich demographic and language background data. We first demonstrate high reliability for ENRO tests and their convergent validity with existing meta‐analyses. We then provide a bird's‐eye view of first (L1) and second (L2) language comparisons and examine the relative role of various predictors of reading and listening comprehension and reading speed. Across analyses, we found substantially more overlap than differences between L1 and L2 speakers, suggesting that English reading proficiency is best considered across a continuum of skill, ability, and experiences spanning L1 and L2 speakers alike. We end by providing pointers for how researchers can mine ENRO data for future studies.
A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in non‐technical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
This research aimed to clarify the role of the perceptual richness of words (PR) in the recall tasks. PR was operationalized as the number of sensory modalities through which an object can be ...perceived. Previously, we found that concepts experienced with many modalities (dog) were recalled more accurately in cued recall than those perceived with few modalities (rainbow) and abstract words. This finding fitted the Perceptual symbol system theory (PSST) and the Dual coding theory (DCT) predictions. We tested the PR effect in both cued (experiment 1- E1) and free recall tasks (experiment 2 – E2) in the present study. With careful stimuli manipulation of context availability and emotional valence and statistical control of arousal and relatedness, made to exclude their influence on recall, we tested alternative explanations of the concreteness effect offered by the relational-distinctiveness hypothesis. The additional perceptual codes improved recall accuracy in the cued recall task (E1), which was in line with the PSST and the DCT. This conclusion is straightforward: two critical groups of concrete words were matched for concreteness and visual perceptual strength. Thus, more accurate recall of concepts experienced with many modalities can be attributed to richer perceptual experience. However, the relational information was essential for recall accuracy in the free recall task (E2), as hypothesized by the relational-distinctiveness hypothesis.
In this study, we investigate the relevance of inflectional paradigms and inflectional classes for lexical processing. We provide an information-theoretical measure of the divergence in the frequency ...distributions of two of the paradigms to which a word simultaneously belongs: the paradigm of the stem and the more general paradigm of the nominal class in which the stem is embedded. We show that after controlling for other variables, this measure is positively correlated with response latencies and error counts in a visual lexical decision experiment in Serbian. We interpret these results as a trace of the simultaneous influence on lexical processing of both the stem and the inflectional paradigms.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Abstract
The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on ...languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.
A 2-layer
symbolic network model based on the equilibrium equations of the
Rescorla-Wagner model (
Danks,
2003
) is proposed. The study first presents 2
experiments in Serbian, which reveal for ...sentential reading the inflectional
paradigmatic effects previously observed by
Milin, Filipović Đurđević, and Moscoso del
Prado Martín (2009)
for unprimed lexical decision.
The empirical results are successfully modeled without having to assume separate
representations for inflections or data structures such as inflectional
paradigms. In the next step, the same naive discriminative learning approach is
pitted against a wide range of effects documented in the morphological
processing literature. Frequency effects for complex words as well as for
phrases (
Arnon & Snider,
2010
) emerge in the model without the presence of
whole-word or whole-phrase representations. Family size effects
(
Moscoso del Prado Martín,
Bertram, Häikiö, Schreuder, & Baayen,
2004
;
Schreuder
& Baayen, 1997
) emerge in the simulations across
simple words, derived words, and compounds, without derived words or compounds
being represented as such. It is shown that for pseudo-derived words no special
morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism, as posited by
Rastle, Davis, and New (2004)
,
is required. The model also replicates the finding of
Plag and Baayen (2009)
that, on
average, words with more productive affixes elicit longer response latencies; at
the same time, it predicts that productive affixes afford faster response
latencies for new words. English phrasal paradigmatic effects modulating
isolated word reading are reported and modeled, showing that the paradigmatic
effects characterizing Serbian case inflection have crosslinguistic scope.
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The main goal of this paper is to present a new tool for preparing and conducting the psychological experiments which we created to enrich and facilitate the education process within the practicals ...in the area of cognitive psychology and related fields. It has been designed as an aid in the teaching process at the university level, but due to its simplicity it can easily be applied at earlier levels of schooling as well. We described a computer program UltraLab which created with an idea to follow contemporary trends and be a software which is free, very simple to use in preparing and conducting the experiments, and yet flexible - it can cover a wide range of experimental paradigms. A download link is provided as well. In this paper we describe the basic technical features, give detailed instructions for the preparation of experimental files, as well as for reading the data files. Finally, we point out the advantages which the application of this tool brings to the students who are acquiring the knowledge of experimental psychology.
In this paper we show that the processing of inflected verb forms is simultaneously influenced by the distributional properties of their inflectional paradigm (all the inflected forms of the given ...verb) and also by their inflectional class (all the verbs that conjugate in the same manner). Thus, we generalize a finding that was previously observed with nouns. We demonstrate that a divergence of the frequency distribution within inflectional paradigm from the frequency distribution within inflectional class (operationalized as Relative entropy between the two frequency distributions) is detrimental to processing. We present the results of a visual lexical decision experiment and the results of a simulation that was ran in the Naive Discriminative Reader, a simple computational model based on basic learning principles. We show that Relative entropy between an inflectional paradigm and an inflectional class predicts both empirically observed and simulated processing latencies. By doing so, we add to the body of research that investigates processing effects of information theory based descriptions of language. We also demonstrate that the effect of Relative entropy on the processing of morphology can arise as a consequence of the principles of discriminative learning in a system that maps input cues to outcomes, with no specification of morphology per se.
The authors compared performance on two variants of the primed lexical decision task to investigate morphological processing in native and non-native speakers of English. They examined patterns of ...facilitation on present tense targets. Primes were regular (billed–bill) past tense formations and two types of irregular past tense forms that varied on preservation of target length (fell–fall; taught–teach). When a forward mask preceded the prime (Exp. 1), language and prime type interacted. Native speakers showed reliable regular and irregular length preserved facilitation relative to orthographic controls. Non-native speakers' latencies after morphological and orthographic primes did not differ reliably except for regulars. Under cross-modal conditions (Exp. 2), language and prime type interacted. Native but not non-native speakers showed inhibition following orthographically similar primes. Collectively, reliable facilitation for regulars and patterns across verb type and task provided little support for a processing dichotomy (decomposition, non-combinatorial association) based on inflectional regularity in either native or non-native speakers of English.
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