Masked primes activate feature representations in reading aloud.

Abstract

Theories of reading aloud are silent about the role of subphonemic/subsegmental representations in translating print to sound. However, there is empirical evidence suggesting that feature representations are activated in speech production and visual word recognition. In the present study, we sought to determine whether masked primes activate feature representations in reading aloud using a variation of the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). We found that target nonwords (e.g., BAF) were read aloud faster when preceded by masked nonword primes that shared their initial phoneme with the target (e.g., bez), or primes whose initial phoneme shared all features except voicing with the first phoneme of the target (e.g., piz), compared with unrelated primes (e.g., suz). We obtained the same result in 2 experiments that used different participants and prime durations (around 60 ms in Experiment 1 and 50 ms in Experiment 2). The significant masked feature priming effect that was observed in both experiments converges with the empirical evidence in the speech production and visual word recognition domains indicating a functional role for features in reading aloud. Our findings motivate the further development of current theories of reading aloud and have important implications for extant theories of speech production.

How word-beginnings constrain the pronunciations of word-ends in the reading aloud of English: the phenomena of head- and onset-conditioning

“…This finding aligns well with the results of a masked priming study by Mousikou, Roon & Rastle (2015) . They found that when initial phonemes in the target and in the prime differ just by one feature (voicing vs devoicing; e.g., /b/ vs /p/, /d/ vs /t/, /f/ vs /v/, /g/ vs /k/, /s/ vs /z/), there is a masked onset priming effect: target reading-aloud latencies are shorter compared to an unrelated control condition (BAV primed with biz is responded to faster than BAV primed with pez , which is in turn faster than in the control condition, i.e., BAV primed with suz ).…”

“…Similarly, our study shows that phonemes that share the place and the manner of articulation condition the rimes, and humans are faster to read words where onset-conditioning is effective than words where onset-conditioning is ineffective. Phoneme pairs in Mousikou, Roon & Rastle (2015) study (/b–p/, /d–t/, /f–v/, /g–k/, /s–z/) are equivalent to five out of seven classes that distinguish the measure 2b from the measure 2a in this study (two additional classes in this study are and ). That is, the grouping by both place and manner of articulation in this study resulted in phoneme pairs that are different on the voicing feature, but similar on all other features.…”

“…The conclusion is that phoneme pairs that differ in voicing but share place and manner of articulation are perceptually very similar for humans. These units produce the masked onset priming effect ( Mousikou, Roon & Rastle, 2015 ) and also condition the translation of bodies to rimes in oral reading in a similar way.…”

The Form of Morphemes: MEG Evidence From Masked Priming of Two Hebrew Templates

“…Finally, an even stronger prediction can be made. It has been found that in non-word strings, phonemic features show masked priming effects: the target B AF was read aloud faster when primed by p iz , with which it shares a [labial] feature in the onset /p/, than by suz , whose onset /s/ is unrelated ( Lukatela et al, 2001 ; Mousikou and Coltheart, 2014 ; Mousikou et al, 2015 ). This effect has so far not been shown for whole written forms; typh oid does not prime TYPH OON ( Rastle et al, 2000 ).…”

Perceiving while producing: Modeling the dynamics of phonological planning

“…The lack of an effect in these studies is particularly surprising given the undisputed status of the oral articulator in the description of linguistic contrasts (Chomsky & Halle, 1968; Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). Another set of studies has uncovered feature-level effects for primary oral articulator as well as for voicing, evidenced both by modulations of production RTs (Gordon & Meyer, 1984, for voicing; Klein, Roon, & Gafos, 2015, for articulator; Mousikou, Roon, & Rastle, 2015, for voicing; Roon & Gafos, 2015, for both) and by modulations of the phonetic output of speakers (Goldinger, 1998; Nielsen, 2007; Tilsen, 2009; Yuen, Brysbaert, Davis, & Rastle, 2010) driven by (in)compatibility between recently perceived stimuli and utterances produced. It can be reasonably argued that the inconsistency in finding feature-level effects is due to the variety in the experimental tasks across the various studies, which included responding to an auditory cue based on learned cue-response pairs (Gordon & Meyer, 1984; Roelofs, 1999), responding to a visual cue in the presence of various distractors (Galantucci et al, 2009; Kerzel & Bekkering, 2000; Roon & Gafos, 2015), reading aloud with masked primes (Mousikou et al, 2015), and shadowing spoken stimuli (Mitterer & Ernestus, 2008).…”