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J Segui

Publications and source records attributed to J Segui.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

The monolingual nature of speech segmentation by bilinguals.

Monolingual French speakers employ a syllable-based procedure in speech segmentation; monolingual English speakers use a stress-based segmentation procedure and do not use the syllable-based procedure. In the present study French-English bilinguals participated in segmentation experiments with English and French materials. Their results as a group did not simply mimic the performance of English monolinguals with English language materials and of French monolinguals with French language materials. Instead, the bilinguals formed two groups, defined by forced choice of a dominant language. Only the French-dominant groups showed syllabic segmentation and only with French language materials. The English-dominant group showed no syllabic segmentation in either language. However, the English-dominant group showed stress-based segmentation with English language materials; the French-dominant group did not. We argue that rhythmically based segmentation procedures are mutually exclusive, as a consequence of which speech segmentation by bilinguals is, in one respect at least, functionally monolingual.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Neighborhood frequency effects and letter visibility in visual word recognition.

Two experiments are described that measured lexical decision latencies and errors to five-letter French words with a single higher frequency orthographic neighbor and control words with no higher frequency neighbors. The higher frequency neighbor differed from the stimulus word by either the second letter (e.g., ASTRE-AUTRE) or the fourth letter (CHOPE-CHOSE). Neighborhood frequency effects were found to interact with this factor, and significant interference was observed only to CHOPE-type words. The effects of neighborhood frequency were also found to interact with the position of initial fixation in the stimulus word (either the second letter or the fourth letter). Interference was greatly reduced when the initial fixation was on the critical disambiguating letter (i.e., the letter P in CHOPE). Moreover, word recognition was improved when subjects initially fixated the second letter relative to when they initially fixated the fourth letter of a five-letter word, but this second-letter advantage practically disappeared when the stimulus differed from a more frequent word by its fourth letter. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between visual and lexical factors in visual work recognition.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Management of non-tumoral tracheal stenosis in 112 patients.

From January 1973 to August 1989, 112 patients with non-tumoral tracheal strictures were treated in our unit. In 102 patients, the stenosis followed respiratory support. Eighty-one patients were treated surgically; the rest required only endoscopic therapy. In 28 patients, surgical treatment followed failure of endoscopic management. Of the patients submitted to surgery an isolated tracheal stenosis was present in 54 cases while a laryngotracheal stricture was the lesion in the other 27. Tracheal resection and end-to-end anastomosis was performed in the former group. Rethi, Pearson and Couraud procedures, respectively, were carried out in the latter. We emphasize the difference in the results achieved in the first 5 years and those obtained in the last 10 years. In the former period, 7 reoperations were needed. On the other hand, although the overall mortality of both series was 9%, it decreased to 2% during the last 10 years. Excellent or good ultimate results were achieved in 92% of survivors. Finally, we stress the differences in the proportion of reinterventions and definitive failures in the surgical treatment of isolated tracheal stenosis compared to laryngotracheal strictures.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Lexical effects in phonemic processing: facilitatory or inhibitory.

This article addresses the questions of how and when lexical information influences phoneme identification in a series of phoneme-monitoring experiments in which conflicting predictions of autonomous and interactive models were evaluated. Strong facilitatory lexical effects (reflected by large differences in detection latencies to targets in words and matched nonwords) were found only when targets came after the uniqueness point of the target-bearing word. Furthermore, no evidence was obtained for lexically mediated inhibition on phoneme identification as predicted by the interactive activation model TRACE. These results taken together point to strong limitations in the way in which lexical information can affect the perception of unambiguous speech.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Neighborhood frequency effects in visual word recognition: a comparison of lexical decision and masked identification latencies.

Recent research suggests that the time to recognize a visually presented word may be a function of the frequencies of orthographically similar words. More precisely, recognition latencies and errors appear to increase significantly as soon as the stimulus word is orthographically similar to at least one other higher frequency word. This phenomenon, referred to as the neighborhood frequency effect, was subjected to further experimental testing, using a larger selection of words of varying frequency and length, and using a new experimental technique that proved to be extremely sensitive to such effects. The results provide additional support for earlier observations of neighborhood frequency effects. It is also demonstrated that clear word-frequency effects do obtain when neighborhood frequency is held constant. The results support activation-based accounts of the word-recognition process.

Attention↗
PubMed1990

Priming word recognition with orthographic neighbors: effects of relative prime-target frequency.

Four lexical decision experiments were performed with an orthographic priming paradigm in which test words were preceded by orthographically related or unrelated prime words. When prime words were presented for 350 ms without a mask, it was observed that primes that are lower frequency orthographic neighbors of the target interfered with target processing relative to an unrelated condition. When primes were higher frequency neighbors of the target, no interference or facilitation was observed. On the other hand, with briefly presented masked primes, interference was observed with higher frequency prime words. Finally, facilitatory effects in masked repetition priming were obtained with both high- and low-frequency prime-target pairs. The results are interpreted in terms of activation and selection processes operating in visual word recognition.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Limits on bilingualism.

Speech, in any language, is continuous; speakers provide few reliable cues to the boundaries of words, phrases, or ther meaningful units. To understand speech, listeners must divide the continuous speech stream into portions that correspond to such units. This segmentation process is so basic to human language comprehension that psycholinguists long assumed that all speakers would do it in the same way. In previous research, however, we reported that segmentation routines can be language-specific: speakers of English do not. French has relatively clear syllable boundaries and syllable-based timing patterns, whereas English has relatively unclear syllable boundaries and stress-based timing; thus syllabic segmentation would work more efficiently in the comprehension of French than in the comprehension of English. Our present study suggests that at this level of language processing, there are limits to bilingualism: a bilingual speaker has one and only one basic language.

England↗
PubMed1989

Phoneme monitoring and lexical processing: evidence for associative context effects.

In this paper, we propose a new version of the phoneme monitoring task that is well-suited for the study of lexical processing. The generalized phoneme monitoring (GPM) task, in which subjects detect target phonemes appearing anywhere in the test words, was shown to be sensitive to associative context effects. In Experiment 1, using the standard phoneme monitoring procedure in which subjects detect only word-initial targets, no effect of associative context was obtained. In contrast, clear context effects were observed in Experiment 2, which used the GPM task. Subjects responded faster to word-initial and word-medial targets when the target-bearing words were preceded by an associatively related word than when preceded by an unrelated one. The differential effect of context in the two versions of the phoneme monitoring task was interpreted with reference to task demands and their role in directing selective attention. Experiment 3 showed that the size of the context effect was unaffected by the proportion of related words in the experiment, suggesting that the observed effects were not due to subject strategies.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

On the role of competing word units in visual word recognition: the neighborhood frequency effect.

Current models of word recognition generally assume that word units orthographically similar to a stimulus word are involved in the visual recognition of this word. We refer to this set of orthographically similar words as an orthographic neighborhood. Two experiments are presented that investigate the ways in which the composition of this neighborhood can affect word recognition. The data indicate that the presence in the neighborhood of at least one unit of higher frequency than the stimulus word itself results in interference in stimulus word processing. Lexical decision latencies (Experiment 1) and gaze durations (Experiment 2) to words with one neighbor of higher frequency were significantly longer than to words without a more frequent neighbor. This neighborhood frequency effect is discussed in terms of the different types of candidate selection process postulated by contemporary models of visual word recognition.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Right hemisphere language processing: lateral difference with imageable and nonimageable ambiguous words.

Influence of imageability on hemispheric processing difference is studied in a lexical decision task with semantic priming. Homographs and ambiguous words were biased according to the prime toward their low or high imageable meanings and unilaterally presented in the visual field. A right visual field (RVF) superiority was observed; it was nonsignificant for the high imageable (HI) meaning but significant for the low imageable (LI) meaning of the ambiguous words. Thus the results seem to favor a bilateral hemispheric representation of HI words and a unilateral left representation of LI words. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed to the various models of ambiguous word access processing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Strategies for sentence perception.

Three experiments are reported in which rapid sequential visual presentation of sentences--RSVP--was used to determine some perceptual processes in sentence perception. It was found that adjectives, when they are actually or potentially modifiers of a noun, are far less likely to be reported than any other part of the sentence. On the other hand, adjectives which are attribute adjectives are as likely to be reported as any other part of the sentence. Conclusions are drawn concerning sentence perception in general.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Organization of the mental lexicon in 12 schizophrenic subjects].

Using different tasks to test the organization of the mental lexicon in schizophrenics patients we tried to confirm the non organization of their mental lexicon as underlied by different authors and to show a wrong exploitation of their semantic competences. Our findings pointed out the difficulties of the evaluated lexical competences exploitation rather than the disturbances of these competences themselves.

Adult↗