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PubMed2002

Event-related theta power increases in the human EEG during online sentence processing.

By analyzing event-related changes in induced band power in narrow frequency bands of the human electroencephalograph, the present paper explores a possible functional role of the alpha and theta rhythms during the processing of words and of sentences. The results show a phasic power increase in the theta frequency range, together with a phasic power decrease in the alpha frequency range, following the presentation of words in a sentence. These effects may be related to word processing, either lexical or in relation to sentence context. Most importantly, there is a slow and highly frequency-specific increase in theta power as a sentence unfolds, possibly related to the formation of an episodic memory trace, or to incremental verbal working memory load.

Adult↗

PubMed1987

A comparison of word recognition processes in dyslexic and normal readers at two reading-age levels.

This study addressed the question of whether dyslexic children use qualitatively different word identification processes as compared to normal readers at the same stage of reading acquisition. Fifty-two dyslexic children and reading-age matched normal readers were required to pronounce words and pseudowords designed to tap several word recognition and decoding processes. Performance profiles were compared for the two reading groups at two reading ages. Although an invariant acquisition sequence was observed across reading groups, differences in level of performance between dyslexics and reading-age controls varied as a function of reading age. The performance of the more advanced dyslexics was virtually indistinguishable from normal readers on all measures. In contrast, the younger reading age dyslexics differed from normal readers on several measures of spelling-sound correspondences. However, no reading group differences were observed on measures of word recognition. The results indicated that dyslexics and normal readers at the same reading age use essentially the same processes to recognize words, but may differ in knowledge of correspondence rules.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Continuous processing in word recognition at 24 months.

Speech processing in adults in continuous: as acoustic-phonetic information is heard, listeners' interpretation of the speech is updated incrementally. The present studies used a visual fixation technique to examine whether young children also interpret speech continuously. In Experiments 1 and 2, 24-month-old children looked at visual displays while hearing sentences. Sentences each contained a target word labeling one of the two displayed pictures. Children's latency to fixate the labeled picture was measured. Children's responses were delayed when the competing distractor picture's label overlapped phonetically with the target at onset (dog-doll), but not when the pictures' labels rhymed (ball-doll), showing that children monitored the speech stream incrementally for acoustic-phonetic information specifying the correct picture. In Experiment 3, adults' responses in the same task were found to be very similar to those of the 24-month-olds. This research shows that by 24 months, children can interpret speech continuously.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Use of word processors to support written communication: an annotated bibliography.

When children with disabilities have difficulty with written communication, members of their educational teams, including occupational therapists and physical therapists, often recommend use of a word processor. This annotated bibliography summarizes a variety of articles that describe the use of word processing technology with school-aged children. The articles include research reports, descriptions of special features used with word processing programs, and guidelines for using word processing with students. Implications for occupational therapists and physical therapists working with students who have written communication problems are discussed.

Child↗

PubMed2002

Evidence of conscious and subconscious olfactory information processing during word encoding: a magnetoencephalographic (MEG) study.

The present study was meant to distinguish between unconscious and conscious olfactory information processing and to investigate the influence of olfaction on word information processing. Magnetic field changes were recorded in healthy young participants during deep encoding of visually presented words whereby some of the words were randomly associated with an odor. All recorded data were then split into two groups. One group consisted of participants who did not consciously perceive the odor during the whole experiment whereas the other group did report continuous conscious odor perception. The magnetic field changes related to the condition 'words without odor' were subtracted from the magnetic field changes related to the condition 'words with odor' for both groups. First, an odor-induced effect occurred between about 200 and 500 ms after stimulus onset which was similar in both groups. It is interpreted to reflect an activity reduction during word encoding related to the additional olfactory stimulation. Second, a later effect occurred between about 600 and 900 ms after stimulus onset which differed between the two groups. This effect was due to higher brain activity related to the additional olfactory stimulation. It was more pronounced in the group consisting of participants who consciously perceived the odor during the whole experiment as compared to the other group. These results are interpreted as evidence that the later effect is related to conscious odor perception whereas the earlier effect reflects unconscious olfactory information processing. Furthermore, our study provides evidence that only the conscious perception of an odor which is simultaneously presented to the visual presentation of a word reduces its chance to be subsequently recognized.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Processing lexically embedded spoken words.

A large number of multisyllabic words contain syllables that are themselves words. Previous research using cross-modal priming and word-spotting tasks suggests that embedded words may be activated when the carrier word is heard. To determine the effects of an embedded word on processing of the larger word, processing times for matched pairs of bisyllabic words were examined to contrast the effects of the presence or absence of embedded words in both 1st- and 2nd-syllable positions. Results from auditory lexical decision and single-word shadowing demonstrate that the presence of an embedded word in the 1st-syllable position speeds processing times for the carrier word. The presence of an embedded word in the 2nd syllable has no demonstrable effect.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Functional interactions of the inferior frontal cortex during the processing of words and word-like stimuli.

The hypothesis that ventral/anterior left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) subserves semantic processing and dorsal/posterior LIFG subserves phonological processing was tested by determining the pattern of functional connectivity of these regions with regions in left occipital and temporal cortex during the processing of words and word-like stimuli. In accordance with the hypothesis, we found strong functional connectivity between activity in ventral LIFG and activity in occipital and temporal cortex only for words, and strong functional connectivity between activity in dorsal LIFG and activity in occipital and temporal cortex for words, pseudowords, and letter strings, but not for false font strings. These results demonstrate a task-dependent functional fractionation of the LIFG in terms of its functional links with posterior brain areas.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Gamma-band desynchronization in language areas reflects syntactic process of words.

The aim of this study was to verify the relation between gamma-band activity and process of function words. We recorded the neuromagnetic signals in six healthy volunteers during silent reading of verbs (verb task) and forming of the past tenses (past-tense task) and investigated the spatio-temporal distribution of event-related desynchronization (ERD) and synchronization using synthetic aperture magnetometry. In both tasks, ERDs were observed simultaneously at multiple language-related areas. The left junctional area of inferior frontal sulcus and precentral sulcus and the left supramarginal gyrus showed stronger and/or longer-lasting ERDs in past-tense task than in verb task. This result suggests that the gamma-activities reflect the syntactic process of words.

Adult↗

PubMed1984

A comparison of the word recognition processes of blind and sighted children.

2 word/nonword decision experiments were carried out to investigate differences in reading that might exist between congenitally blind children reading Braille and sighted children dealing with print. 3 aspects of single-word recognition were studied: semantic processing, word-frequency effects, and phonological recoding. In addition, a comparison of word recognition performance was made under normal conditions and under conditions of reduced legibility. The sighted children showed an increased semantic facilitation effect with degraded when compared with undegraded print conditions. In contrast, for the blind children this trend was reversed. The magnitude of the word-frequency effect was unaffected by script legibility in either group. In addition, an increased difficulty of rejecting pseudohomophones (e.g., bloo) relative to legal nonwords (e.g., ploo) was found for the blind in the degraded condition and for the sighted with degraded and undegraded print. These results are discussed in terms of the relative influence of perceptual feature-analysis processes and attentional semantic processing.

Attention↗

PubMed1997

Cerebral processing of words and the development of chronic pain.

The processing of pain-related, body-related, and neutral words was assessed in individuals with prechronic pain and matched healthy controls. Integrated surface electromyogram, heart rate, skin conductance level, and visual event-related potentials from 11 electrode sites were recorded during the presentation of three word types at perception threshold. Startle responses were recorded from words presented above perception threshold. The patient and control groups did not differ in recognition performance. Pain-related words evoked an enhanced early component (N100) of the visual event-related potential only in the prechronic pain group. In both groups the late slow wave and the startle response were enhanced for body- and pain-related words compared with those for neutral words. All word types elicited larger late positivities in the prechronic pain group and in the right compared with the left hemisphere. These data suggest differential cortical processing of pain-related material in persons at a prechronic pain stage.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Personal computers and process writing: a written language intervention for deaf children.

This study was concerned with the effectiveness of word processing as a written language intervention for primary-age deaf children. Subjects were 14 children in two primary school deaf-unit classes matched in terms of age, gender, and degree of hearing loss. A quasi-experimental design incorporating multiple-group baselines with pre- and post-tests enable all subjects to receive the intervention while maintaining experimental control. Samples of children's written language were collected at the end of each phase in the study. Experienced teachers of deaf children rated five dimensions of the quality of the written language samples, while a speech and language therapist judged other linguistic qualities of the writing. Significant improvements in quality ratings over the course of the study indicated that the word processing intervention had led to improvements in the children's written language skills. These results confirm the effectiveness of word processing as an adjunct to the process writing approach to written language instruction for deaf children.

Child↗

PubMed2000

Meaning resolution processes for words: a parallel independent model.

Lexical ambiguity research over the last two decades is reviewed, with a focus on how that literature applies to understanding the resolution of meaning for words. Early models of ambiguity processing dealt almost exclusively with the time course of the effects of context on lexical access, in order to address the issue of modularity of lexical access. Newer models of ambiguity processing accommodate recent findings of early context effects that are contingent on both strength of context and meaning frequency. The most important contribution of these newer models of ambiguity processing is not to the modularity debate, but to investigation of the range of parameters affecting the entire meaning resolution process, including meaning access as well as the integration of meanings into context. As an example of this approach, we describe a simple quantitative model of meaning resolution that subsumes many other models as parametric variations.

Humans↗

PubMed1991

Visual speech processing: word-decoding and word-discrimination related to sentence-based speechreading and hearing-impairment.

Two aspects of visual speech processing in speechreading (word decoding and word discrimination) were tested in a group of 24 normal hearing and a group of 20 hearing-impaired subjects. Word decoding and word discrimination performance were independent of factors related to the impairment, both in a quantitative and a qualitative sense. Decoding skill, but not discrimination skill, was associated with sentence-based speechreading. The results were interpreted such that, in order to represent a critical component process in sentence-based speechreading, the visual speech perception task must entail lexically induced processing as a task-demand. The theoretical status of the word decoding task as one operationalization of a speech decoding module was discussed (Fodor, 1983). An error analysis of performance in the word decoding/discrimination tasks suggested that the perception of heard stimuli, as well as the perception of lipped stimuli, were critically dependent on the same features; that is, the temporally initial phonetic segment of the word (cf. Marslen-Wilson, 1987). Implications for a theory of visual speech perception were discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Visual word form familiarity and attention in lateral difference during processing Japanese Kana words.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between familiarity and laterality in reading Japanese Kana words. In two divided-visual-field experiments, three- or four-character Hiragana or Katakana words were presented in both familiar and unfamiliar scripts, to which subjects performed lexical decisions. Experiment 1, using three stimulus durations (40, 100, 160 ms), suggested that only in the unfamiliar script condition was increased stimulus presentation time differently affected in each visual field. To examine this lateral difference during the processing of unfamiliar scripts as related to attentional laterality, a concurrent auditory shadowing task was added in Experiment 2. The results suggested that processing words in an unfamiliar script requires attention, which could be left-hemisphere lateralized, while orthographically familiar kana words can be processed automatically on the basis of their word-level orthographic representations or visual word form.

Attention↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The effect of five proofreading conditions on the spelling performance of college students with learning disabilities.

This study investigated the effect of five proofreading conditions on the spelling performance of 12 college students with learning disabilities on a composition activity. The proofreading conditions investigated were handwriting with no additional assistance, handwriting with a conventional print dictionary, handwriting with a handheld spelling checker, word processing with no additional assistance, and word processing with an integrated spelling checker. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze the results, with proofreading condition used as a within-participants factor. Except for handwriting alone, all of the techniques resulted in significant reductions in the number of spelling errors in the students' written work; however, none of the techniques enabled the students to produce compositions with a mean level of spelling accuracy comparable to that of their nondisabled peers.

Achievement↗

PubMed2000

The anatomy of language: contributions from functional neuroimaging.

This article illustrates how functional neuroimaging can be used to test the validity of neurological and cognitive models of language. Three models of language are described: the 19th Century neurological model which describes both the anatomy and cognitive components of auditory and visual word processing, and 2 20th Century cognitive models that are not constrained by anatomy but emphasise 2 different routes to reading that are not present in the neurological model. A series of functional imaging studies are then presented which show that, as predicted by the 19th Century neurologists, auditory and visual word repetition engage the left posterior superior temporal and posterior inferior frontal cortices. More specifically, the roles Wernicke and Broca assigned to these regions lie respectively in the posterior superior temporal sulcus and the anterior insula. In addition, a region in the left posterior inferior temporal cortex is activated for word retrieval, thereby providing a second route to reading, as predicted by the 20th Century cognitive models. This region and its function may have been missed by the 19th Century neurologists because selective damage is rare. The angular gyrus, previously linked to the visual word form system, is shown to be part of a distributed semantic system that can be accessed by objects and faces as well as speech. Other components of the semantic system include several regions in the inferior and middle temporal lobes. From these functional imaging results, a new anatomically constrained model of word processing is proposed which reconciles the anatomical ambitions of the 19th Century neurologists and the cognitive finesse of the 20th Century cognitive models. The review focuses on single word processing and does not attempt to discuss how words are combined to generate sentences or how several languages are learned and interchanged. Progress in unravelling these and other related issues will depend on the integration of behavioural, computational and neurophysiological approaches, including neuroimaging.

Brain↗

PubMed2000

[Semantic processing of words in selective listening: an examination using recognition tests and event-related brain potentials].

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the degree of semantic processing for unattended words. In a dichotic listening task, each participant was required to attend selectively to either a word sequence in one ear or a speech passage in the opposite ear. The selective listening was confirmed by attenuated P1-N1 and N400 waves of the event-related brain potential to unattended words. The N400 attenuation with semantic priming was observed only for attended words. In a following recognition test with a booklet and auditory presentation, the percentage of false alarms for "new" words (or lures) semantically related to "old" words was higher when the "old" words were attended in selective listening than when unattended. These findings suggest that selective attention can act before and/or at a level of semantic processing.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

Using technology to enhance the writing processes of students with learning disabilities.

This article reviews the ways that computers can support writing by students with learning disabilities, with an emphasis applications that go beyond word processing. Following an overview of research on word processing is a discussion of software assists with the basic processes of transcription and sentence generation, including spelling checkers, speech synthesis, prediction, and grammar and style checkers. Next, applications that support the cognitive processes of planning are review including prompting programs, outlining and semantic mapping software, and multimedia applications. Finally, the use of computer networks to support collaboration and communication with diverse audiences is addressed.

Child↗