Using four-character Chinese word targets, Yang, Chen, Spinelli, and Lupker (
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
,
45
(8), 1511–1526,
2019
) and Yang, Hino et al. (
...Journal of Memory and Language, 113
, 104017,
2020
) demonstrated that backward primes (Roman alphabet example—
dcba
priming
ABCD
) produce large masked priming effects. This result suggests that character position information is quite imprecisely coded by Chinese readers when reading in their native language. The present question was, If Chinese readers have evolved a reading system not requiring precise position information, would Chinese–English bilinguals show more extreme transposed letter priming effects when processing English words than both English monolinguals and other types of bilinguals whose L2 is English? In Experiment
1
, Chinese–English bilinguals, but not English monolinguals, showed a clear backward priming effect in a lexical decision task. In Experiment
2
, the parallel backward priming effect was absent for both Spanish–English and Arabic–English bilinguals. Apparently, the orthographic coding system that Chinese–English bilinguals use when reading in their L2 leans heavily on the flexible/imprecise position coding process that they develop for reading in their L1.
A word's exterior letters, particularly its initial letter, appear to have a special status when reading. Therefore, most orthographic coding models incorporate assumptions giving initial letters ...and, in some cases, final letters, enhanced importance during the orthographic coding process. In the present article, 3 masked priming experiments were carried out, using the conventional lexical-decision task, the sandwich priming lexical-decision task and the masked priming same-different task, in an attempt to examine a number of those models with a specific focus on the implications of the models' assumptions concerning the different letter positions. The related primes and targets were 6-letter strings that differed in 2 letter positions, initial (e.g., "jnckey-HOCKEY"), middle (e.g., "hojney-HOCKEY"), or final ("hockjn-HOCKEY"), with the middle-letters different primes being the primes that maintained both end letters. To the extent possible, the predictions of the models were derived by using easyNet, the simulation program recently developed by Adelman, Gubian, and Davis (2017). In all experiments, the final-letters different primes were the most effective primes with there being no clear distinction between the other 2 prime types, a pattern that none of the models predicted. The lack of an advantage for the middle-letters different primes suggests that the orthographic code driving masked priming is not one that places a special emphasis on the identities of the exterior letters.
Three masked priming paradigms, the conventional masked priming lexical-decision task (Forster & Davis, 1984), the sandwich priming task (Lupker & Davis, 2009), and the masked priming same-different ...task (Norris & Kinoshita, 2008), were used to investigate priming for a given target (e.g., JUDGE) from primes created by either adding a letter to the beginning of the target (e.g., zjudge) or replacing the target's initial letter (e.g., zudge). Virtually all models of orthographic coding that allow calculation of orthographic similarity measures predict that zjudge should be the better prime because zjudge contains all the letters in JUDGE in their correct order whereas zudge does not. Nonetheless, Adelman et al.'s (2014) megastudy data indicated no difference in the effectiveness of these two prime types. The present experiments provide additional support for the conclusion of no difference between these two prime types with the only observed difference being a small zudge prime advantage in Experiment 1b (sandwich priming). These results suggest that models of orthographic coding/word recognition may be well served by allowing inconsistent information (e.g., the "z" in both zjudge and zudge indicates that the presented prime is not JUDGE) to be given considerable weight during the orthographic coding/word recognition process.
Public Significance Statement
To understand the reading process, it is crucial to understand how the orthographic coding process is carried out. Our findings suggest that the importance of negative information in that process (e.g., there is not a "j" in the word being read) has been overlooked in most models of the reading process, implying that the importance of positive information may be being overstated in current models and in reading instruction.
Nonwords created by transposing two
adjacent letters (i.e., transposed-letter (TL) nonwords like
jugde) are very effective at activating the lexical representation of their base words. This fact ...poses problems for most computational models of word recognition (e.g., the interactive-activation model and its extensions), which assume that exact letter positions are rapidly coded during the word recognition process. To examine the scope of TL similarity effects further, we asked whether TL similarity effects occur for nonwords created by exchanging two
nonadjacent letters (e.g.,
caniso-
CASINO) in three masked form priming experiments using the lexical decision task. The two nonadjacent transposed letters were consonants in Experiment 1 (e.g.,
caniso-
CASINO), vowels in Experiment 2 (
anamil-ANIMAL) and both consonants and vowels in Experiment 3. Results showed that nonadjacent TL primes produce priming effects (in comparison to orthographic controls, e.g.,
caviro-
CASINO), however, only when the transposed letters are consonants. In a final experiment we examined latencies for nonwords created by nonadjacent transpositions of consonants versus vowels in a lexical decision task. Both types of nonwords produced longer latencies than matched controls, with consonant TL nonwords being more difficult than vowel TL nonwords. The implications of these findings for models having “position-specific” coding schemes as well as for models proposing alternative coding schemes are discussed.
The present experiment provides an investigation of a promising new tool, the masked priming same-different task, for investigating the orthographic coding process. Orthographic coding is the process ...of establishing a mental representation of the letters and letter order in the word being read which is then used by readers to access higher-level (e.g., semantic) information about that word. Prior research (e.g., Norris & Kinoshita, 2008) had suggested that performance in this task may be based entirely on orthographic codes. As reported by Lupker, Nakayama, and Perea (2015a), however, in at least some circumstances, phonological codes also play a role. Specifically, even though their 2 languages are completely different orthographically, Lupker et al.'s Japanese-English bilinguals showed priming in this task when masked L1 primes were phonologically similar to L2 targets. An obvious follow-up question is whether Lupker et al.'s effect might have resulted from a strategy that was adopted by their bilinguals to aid in processing of, and memory for, the somewhat unfamiliar L2 targets. In the present experiment, Japanese readers responded to (Japanese) Kanji targets with phonologically identical primes (on "related" trials) being presented in a completely different but highly familiar Japanese script, Hiragana. Once again, significant priming effects were observed, indicating that, although performance in the masked priming same-different task may be mainly based on orthographic codes, phonological codes can play a role even when the stimuli being matched are familiar words from a reader's L1.
Previous research has demonstrated cognate translation priming effects in masked priming lexical decision tasks (LDTs) even when a bilingual’s two languages have different scripts. Because those ...effect sizes are normally larger than with noncognates, the effects have been partially attributed to the impact of prime-target phonological similarity. The present research extended that work by examining priming effects when using triple different-script cognates, i.e.,
咖啡 /ka1 feɪ1/-coffee-コーヒー/KoRhiR/
. Specifically, masked cognate priming effects were examined in six different priming directions (i.e., L1↔L2, L1↔L3, and L2↔L3) for Chinese-English-Japanese trilinguals using LDTs. Significant priming effects were observed only when the primes were from the stronger language. This asymmetric pattern suggests that the phonological similarity of cognate primes only facilitates the processing of different-script triple cognates to the extent that the processing of the prime is robust enough to make phonology available before target processing is finished.
Norris and colleagues (Kinoshita & Norris, 2009; Norris & Kinoshita, 2008; Norris, Kinoshita, & van Casteren, 2010) have suggested that priming effects in the masked prime same−different task are ...based solely on prelexical orthographic codes. This suggestion was evaluated by examining phonological priming in that task using Japanese−English bilinguals. Targets and reference words were English words with the primes written in Katakana script, a syllabic script that is orthographically quite different from the Roman letter script used in writing English. Phonological priming was observed both when the primes were Japanese cognate translation equivalents of the English target/reference words (Experiment 1) and when the primes were phonologically similar Katakana nonwords (Experiment 2), with the former effects being substantially larger than the noncognate translation priming effects reported by Lupker, Perea, and Nakayama (2015). These results indicate that the same−different task is influenced by phonological information. One implication is that, due to the fact that phonology and orthography are inevitably confounded in Roman letter languages, previously reported priming effects in those languages may have been at least partly due to phonological, rather than orthographic, similarity. The potential extent of this problem, the nature of the matching process in the same−different task, and the implications for using this task as a means of investigating the orthographic code in reading are discussed.
Models of written word recognition in languages using the Roman alphabet assume that a word's visual form is quickly mapped onto abstract units. This proposal is consistent with the finding that ...masked priming effects are of similar magnitude from lowercase, uppercase, and alternating-case primes (e.g., beard-BEARD, BEARD-BEARD, and BeArD-BEARD). We examined whether this claim can be readily generalized to the 2 syllabaries of Japanese Kana (Hiragana and Katakana). The specific rationale was that if the visual form of Kana words is lost early in the lexical access process, alternating-script repetition primes should be as effective as same-script repetition primes at activating a target word. Results showed that alternating-script repetition primes were less effective at activating lexical representations of Katakana words than same-script repetition primes-indeed, they were no more effective than partial primes that contained only the Katakana characters from the alternating-script primes. Thus, the idiosyncrasies of each writing system do appear to shape the pathways to lexical access.
Transposed-letter (TL) nonwords (e.g., jugde) can be easily misperceived as words, a fact that is somewhat inconsistent with the letter-position-coding schemes employed by most current models of ...visual word recognition. To examine this issue further, we conducted four masked semantic/associative priming experiments, using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, the related primes could be words, TL-internal nonwords, or replacement-letter (RL) nonwords (e.g., judge, jugde, or judpe, respectively; the target would be COURT). Relative to an unrelated condition, masked TL-internal primes produced a significant semantic/associative priming effect, an effect that was only slightly smaller than the priming effect for word primes. No effect, however, was observed for RL-nonword primes. In Experiment 2, the TL-nonword primes were created by switching the two final letters of the primes (e.g., judeg). The results again showed a semantic/associative priming effect for word primes, but not for TL-final nonword primes or for RL-nonword primes. Experiment 3 replicated the associative/semantic priming effect for TL-internal nonword primes, with, again, no effect for TL-final nonword primes. Finally, Experiment 4 again failed to yield a priming effect for TL-final nonword primes. The implications of these results for the choice of a letter-position-coding scheme in visual word recognition models are discussed.
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