Biomedical subjects

Manuel Carreiras

Publications and source records attributed to Manuel Carreiras.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

Do transposed-letter similarity effects occur at a morpheme level? Evidence for morpho-orthographic decomposition.

When does morphological decomposition occur in visual word recognition? An increasing body of evidence suggests the presence of early morphological processing. The present work investigates this issue via an orthographic similarity manipulation. Three masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the transposed-letter similarity effect (e.g., jugde facilitates JUDGE more than the control jupbe) in polymorphemic and monomorphemic words. If morphological decomposition occurs at early stages of visual word recognition, we would expect an interaction with transposed-letter effects. Experiment 1 was carried out in Basque, which is an agglutinative language. The nonword primes were created by transposing two letters that either crossed the morphological boundaries of suffixes or did not. Results showed a transposed-letter effect for non-affixed words, whereas there were no signs of a transposed-letter effect across morpheme boundaries for affixed words. In Experiment 2, this issue was revisited in a non-agglutinative language (Spanish), with prefixed and suffixed word pairs. Again, results showed a significant transposed-letter effect for non-affixed words, whereas there were no signs of a transposed-letter effect across morpheme boundaries for affixed words (both prefixed words and suffixed words). Experiment 3 replicated the previous findings, and also revealed that, for polymorphemic words, transposed-letter priming effects occurred for within-morpheme transpositions. Taken together, these findings support the view that morphological decomposition operates at an early stage of visual word recognition.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Effect of word and syllable frequency on activation during lexical decision and reading aloud.

This functional MRI (fMRI) study investigated the effect of lexical and syllable frequency on visual word processing during lexical decision and reading aloud. Previous research has shown a dissociation of syllable and word frequency effects in Spanish using behavioral and electrophysiological measures, suggesting that sublexical (syllabic) representations are computed and mediate the firing of lexical candidates. Here, we characterize the neuroanatomical basis of these lexical and sublexical manipulations and their dependence on task. During lexical decision, words with low vs. high lexical frequency increased activation in left frontal, anterior cingulate, supplemental motor area (SMA), and pre-SMA regions; while words with high vs. low syllable frequency increased activation in a left anterior inferior temporal region. In contrast, when the words were read aloud those with low vs. high syllable frequency increased activation in the left anterior insula, with no other significant effects. On the basis of the neuroanatomy, we propose that the contrasting effects of syllable frequency during lexical decision and reading aloud reflect two different cognitive processes in visual word processing. Specifically, words with high-frequency syllables may increase lexical competition in the inferior temporal lobe while facilitating articulatory planning in the left anterior insula.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Do transposed-letter similarity effects occur at a syllable level?

One key issue for any computational model of visual word recognition is the choice of an input coding scheme for assigning letter position. Recent research has shown that transposed-letter similarity effects occur even when the transposed letters are not adjacent (caniso-casino; Perea & Lupker, 2004, JML). In the present study we conducted two single-presentation lexical decision experiments to examine whether transposed-letter effects occur at a syllable level. We tested two types of nonwords: (1) nonwords created by transposing two internal CV syllables (PRIVEMARA; the base word is primavera, the Spanish for spring) and (2) nonwords created by transposing two adjacent bigrams that do not form a syllable (PRIMERAVA). We also created the appropriate orthographic control conditions, in which the critical letters were replaced instead of being switched. Results showed that the transposition of two syllables or two adjacent bigrams produced a quite robust (and similar) transposed-letter effect. Thus, transposed-letter effects seem to occur at an early orthographic, graphemic level, rather than at a syllable level. We examine the implications of the observed results for the input coding schemes in visual word recognition.

Attention↗

PubMed2006

Do transposed-letter similarity effects occur at a prelexical phonological level?

Nonwords created by transposing two letters (e.g., RELOVUTION) are very effective at activating the lexical representation of their base words (Perea & Lupker, 2004). In the present study, we examined whether the nature of transposed-letter (TL) similarity effects was purely orthographic or whether it could also have a phonological component. Specifically, we examined transposed-letter similarity effects for nonwords created by transposing two nonadjacent letters (e.g., relovución-REVOLUCION) in a masked form priming experiment using the lexical decision task (Experiment 1). The controls were (a) a pseudohomophone of the transposed-letter prime (relobución-REVOLUCION; note that B and V are pronounced as /b/ in Spanish) or (b) an orthographic control (relodución-REVOLUCION). Results showed a similar advantage of the TL nonword condition over the phonological and the orthographic control conditions. Experiment 2 showed a masked phonological priming effect when the letter positions in the prime were in the right order. In a third experiment, using a single-presentation lexical decision task, TL nonwords produced longer latencies than the orthographic and phonological controls, whereas there was only a small phonological effect restricted to the error data. These results suggest that TL similarity effects are orthographic--rather than phonological--in nature.

Association↗

PubMed2006

Do transposed-letter effects occur across lexeme boundaries?

A masked priming lexical decision experiment was conducted to examine whether or not assignment of letter position in a word can be influenced by lexeme boundaries. The experiment was run in Basque, which is a strongly agglutinating language with a high proportion of inflected and compound words. Nonword primes were created by transposing two nonadjacent letters that crossed or did not cross morphological boundaries. Specifically, we compared morphologically complex prime-target pairs (e.g., arbigide-ARGIBIDE) with orthographic controls (e.g., arkipide-ARGIBIDE; note that ARGIBIDE is a compound of ARGI + BIDE) and noncompound pairs (e.g., ortakila--ORKATILA) with orthographic controls (e.g., orbahila-ORKATILA). Results showed that transposed-letter effects were virtually the same for compound and noncompound words, both when the orthographic control condition was used as a baseline and when the identity condition was used as a baseline. Thus, transposed-letter similarity effects seem to be orthographic in nature. We examine the implications of these results for the models of visual word recognition.

Humans↗

PubMed2005

Processing controlled PROs in Spanish.

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the processing of the empty category PRO and the time-course of this in Spanish. Eye movements were recorded while participants read sentences in which a matrix clause was followed by a subordinate infinitival clause, so that the subject or the object of the main clause could act as controller of PRO, and therefore as implicit grammatical subject of the infinitive. In Experiment 1, verb control information was manipulated: The matrix clause contained either subject-control verbs like prometer ('promise') or object-control verbs like forzar ('force'). In Experiment 2, the preposition that headed adverbial subordinate clauses was manipulated: Two different kinds of infinitival adverbial clauses were used, expressing purpose (preposition para) and reason (preposition por) and in which control information is primarily induced by the prepositions (para tends to trigger subject-control; por object-control). Experiment 1 showed that readers make immediate use of verb control information to recover the antecedent of the empty category PRO in Spanish obligatory control constructions. The data obtained in Experiment 2 suggest that during the processing of the empty category PRO in purpose vs. reason adverbial subordinate infinitival clauses the control information induced by the prepositions por vs. para is not initially used as a constraint to guide the selection of the nominal antecedent of PRO. In addition, both experiments showed that PRO antecedent selection is a very fast process and that, together with verb control information, recency played an important role. The results are discussed in terms of current psycholinguistic hypotheses about empty categories and in relation to formal linguistic hypotheses about PRO control. We argue that obligatory control ties (which are co-referential ties) are processed fast because they are launched from the same lexical platform that launches all fast syntactic connections (complements, as opposed to modifiers). In short, that such lexically-specified co-referential ties are regulated by linguistic form.

Cognition↗

PubMed2005

Early and late processes in syllogistic reasoning: evidence from eye-movements.

An eye-movement monitoring experiment was carried out to examine the effects of the difficulty of the problem (simple versus complex problems) and the type of figure (figure 1 or figure 4) on the time course of processing categorical syllogisms. The results showed that the course of influence for these two factors is different. We found early processing effects for the figure but not for the difficulty of the syllogism and later processing effects for both the figure and the difficulty. These results lend support to the Model Theory (Johnson-Laird, P. N., Byrne, R. M. J. (1991). Deduction. Hillsdale, New Jersey: LEA.) as opposed to other theories of reasoning (Chater, N., Oaksford, M. (1999). The probability heuristics model of syllogistic reasoning. Cognitive Psychology, 38, 191-258; Rips, L. J. (1994). The psychology of proof. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Rips, L. J. (1994). The psychology of proof. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Cognition↗

PubMed2005

Linguistic perception: neural processing of a whistled language.

Silbo Gomero is a whistled language that is a rare and endangered surrogate of Spanish, used by shepherds on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands for communication over long distances on difficult terrain. Here we show that areas of the brain normally associated with spoken-language function are also activated in proficient whistlers, but not in controls, when they are listening to Silbo Gomero. Our findings demonstrate that the language-processing regions of the human brain can adapt to a surprisingly wide range of signalling forms.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2005

Sequential effects of phonological priming in visual word recognition.

Two masked priming experiments were conducted to examine phonological priming of bisyllabic words in French, and in particular, whether it operates sequentially or in parallel. Bisyllabic target words were primed by pseudowords that shared either the first or the second phonological syllable of the target. Overlap of the first syllable only-not the second-produced facilitation in both the lexical decision and the naming tasks. These findings suggest that, for polysyllabic words, phonological codes are computed sequentially during silent reading and reading aloud.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2005

Grammatical gender and number agreement in Spanish: an ERP comparison.

The role of grammatical gender and number representations in syntactic processes during reading in Spanish was studied using the event-related potentials (ERPs) technique. The electroencephalogram was recorded with a dense array of 128 electrodes while Spanish speakers read word pairs (Experiment 1) or sentences (Experiment 2) in which gender or number agreement relationships were manipulated. Disagreement in word pairs formed by a noun and an adjective (e.g., faro-alto [lighthouse-high]) produced an N400-type effect, while word pairs formed by an article and a noun (e.g., el-piano [the-piano]) showed an additional left anterior negativity effect (LAN). Agreement violations with the same words inserted in sentences (e.g., El piano estaba viejo y desafinado [the (m-s)piano (m-s) was old (m-s) and off-key]) resulted in a pattern of LAN-P600. This effect was found both when the violation occurred in the middle of the sentence (at the adjective), as well as when this happened at the beginning of the sentence (at the noun), but the last segment of the P600 effect was greater for the middle sentence position, which could indicate differences in the complexity of reanalysis processes. Differences between grammatical gender and number disagreement were found in late measures. In the word pairs experiment, P3 peak latency varied across conditions, being later for gender than for number disagreement. Similarly, in the sentence experiment, the last segment of the P600 effect was greater for gender than for number violations. These event-related potentials (ERPs) effects lend support to the idea that reanalysis or repair processes after grammatical disagreement detection could involve more steps in the case of gender disagreement, as grammatical gender is a feature of the lexical representation in contrast to number, which is considered a morphological feature that combines with the stem of the word.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2005

Early event-related potential effects of syllabic processing during visual word recognition.

A number of behavioral studies have suggested that syllables might play an important role in visual word recognition in some languages. We report two event-related potential (ERP) experiments using a new paradigm showing that syllabic units modulate early ERP components. In Experiment 1, words and pseudowords were presented visually and colored so that there was a match or a mismatch between the syllable boundaries and the color boundaries. The results showed color-syllable congruency effects in the time window of the P200. Lexicality modulated the N400 amplitude, but no effects of this variable were obtained at the P200 window. In Experiment 2, high- and low-frequency words and pseudowords were presented in the congruent and incongruent conditions. The results again showed congruency effects at the P200 for low-frequency words and pseudowords, but not for high-frequency words. Lexicality and lexical frequency effects showed up at the N400 component. The results suggest a dissociation between syllabic and lexical effects with important consequences for models of visual word recognition.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Does conal prime CANAL more than cinal? Masked phonological priming effects in Spanish with the lexical decision task.

Evidence for an early involvement of phonology in word identification usually relies on the comparison between a target word preceded by a homophonic prime and an orthographic control (rait-RATE vs. raut-RATE). This comparison rests on the assumption that the two control primes are equally orthographically similar to the target. Here, we tested for phonological effects with a masked priming paradigm in which orthographic similarity between priming conditions was perfectly controlled at the letter level and in which identification of the prime was virtually at chance for both stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) (66 and 50 msec). In the key prime-target pairs, each prime differed from the target by one vowel letter, but one changed the sound of the initial c, and the other did not (cinal-CANAL vs. conal-CANAL). In the control prime-target pairs, the primes had the identical vowel manipulation, but neither changed the initial consonant sound (pinel-PANEL vs. ponel-PANEL). For both high- and low-frequency words, lexical decision responses to the target were slower when the prime changed the sound of the c than when it did not, whereas there was no difference for the controls at both SOAs. However, this phonological effect was small and was not significant when the SOA was 50 msec. The pattern of data is consistent with an early phonological coding of primes that occurs just a little later than orthographic coding.

Decision Making↗

PubMed2004

Syllable-frequency effects in visual word recognition: evidence from ERPs.

A lexical decision experiment was conducted while event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The word frequency and the first syllable frequency of each word were manipulated. Results showed that, while high frequency words produced less negative amplitudes in the N400 time window than low frequency words, the inverse pattern was found for syllable frequency. Words containing high frequency syllables produced more negative amplitudes than words containing low frequency syllables. Importantly, a significant syllable frequency effect was also obtained at the P200 time window. The results are interpreted in the framework of an interactive activation model, in which high frequency syllables produce the initial activation of a larger number of lexical candidates during the analysis of orthographic or phonological representations, which have to be inhibited later to allow the identification of a unique word. These findings support the idea that, at least in languages with clear syllabic boundaries, syllables are functional sublexical units during visual word recognition.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Event-related potentials elicited during parsing of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish.

Previous behavioural studies in Spanish have found a significant preference for attaching relative clauses preceded by a complex NP (N1 of N2 RC) to the first noun phrase. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to help identify the nature of these processes by directly comparing ERPs to temporary ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses that were finally consistent with either high or low attachment resolution. The larger amplitude of the P600 effect for the low attachment condition suggests that high attachment was the preferred strategy. The P600 effect was widely distributed in the 500-700 ms window, including frontal areas, while the distribution was mainly posterior in the 700-1000 ms window. The results indicate that high attachment is the parsing strategy Spanish readers use for this type of ambiguity and suggest that the P600 may not be a monolithic effect.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Blocking by word frequency and neighborhood density in visual word recognition: a task-specific response criteria account.

Effects of blocking words by frequency class (high vs. low) and neighborhood density (high vs. low) were examined in two experiments using progressive demasking and lexical decision tasks. The aim was to examine the predictions of a task-specific response criteria account of list-blocking effects. Distinct patterns of blocking effects were obtained in the two tasks. In the progressive demasking task, a pure-list disadvantage was obtained to low frequency-high density words, whereas high frequency-low density produced a trend toward a pure-list advantage. In lexical decision, high-frequency words showed a pure-list advantage that was strongest in high-density words, whereas low frequency-low density words produced a trend toward a pure-list disadvantage. A simulation study implementing task-specific response criteria within the framework of the multiple read-out model provided an accurate description of the blocking effects obtained in the experiments. It is argued that adjustments of task-specific response criteria determine changes in list-blocking effects across different tasks.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Integrating gender and number information in Spanish word pairs: an ERP study.

The aim of the current study was to explore the integration processes of gender and number morphological features, since it has been proposed that grammatical gender and number features might be associated with different strength with the word stem in lexical representation. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded using a 128-channel sensor net while twenty-four volunteers read Spanish word pairs and performed a syntactic judgment task. The word pairs which could agree or disagree in gender or number or in gender and number at the same time, were formed by a noun and an adjective (e.g. faro-alto [lighthouse-high]). A negativity around 400 msec with posterior distribution, which has been related to lexical integration processes, was found in response to both gender and number violations. No differences were found between gender disagreement, number disagreement and the double disagreement. Therefore, ERPs suggest that integration of gender and number features may not be different, and that the detection of disagreement may work under a binary state, since the double disagreement condition did not differ from the others. In addition, a subsequent component (identified as P3) showed delayed latencies in the gender disagreement condition as compared to the number disagreement condition, while the double disagreement conditions showed a shorter peak latency than the other two disagreement conditions and similar to the agreement condition. The variations in the latency of the P3 component, which has been related to categorization processes, suggest that these processes are quickly triggered by the accumulation of two incongruent as compared to one disagreement features, and that reanalysis is costlier in the case of gender disagreement as compared to the number disagreement.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Sequential effects in the lexical decision task: the role of the item frequency of the previous trial.

Two lexical decision experiments were conducted to determine whether there is a specific, localized influence of the item frequency of consecutive trials (i.e., first-order sequential effects) when the trials are not related to each other. Both low-frequency words and nonwords were influenced by the frequency of the precursor word (Experiment 1). In contrast, high-frequency words showed little sensitivity to the frequency of the precursor word (Experiment 2), although they showed longer reaction times for word trials preceded by a nonword trial. The presence of sequential effects in the lexical decision task suggests that participants shift their response criteria on a trial-by-trial basis.

Decision Making↗

PubMed2002

Overt reanalysis strategies and eye movements during the reading of mild garden path sentences.

In an eye movement experiment, we examined the use of reanalysis strategies during the reading of locally ambiguous but globally unambiguous Spanish sentences. Among other measures, we examined regressive eye movements made while readers were recovering in reading mild garden path sentences. The sentences had an adverbial clause that, depending on the mood (indicative vs. subjunctive) of the subordinate clause verb, could attach high (to the main verb of the sentence) or low (to the verb in the subordinate clause). Although Spanish speakers favor low attachment, the high attachment version was quite easy to understand. Readers predominately used two alternative strategies to recover from the mild garden path in our sentences. In the more common reanalysis strategy, their eyes regressed from the last region (disambiguation+ 1) directly to the main verb in the sentence. Following this, they reread the rest of the sentence, fixating the next region and the adverb (the beginning of the ambiguous part of the sentence). Less frequently, readers regressed from the last region (disambiguation+1) directly to the adverb. We argue that both types of strategies are consistent with a selective reanalysis process as described by Frazier and Rayner (1982).

Fixation, Ocular↗