Modality effects in word identification

Abstract

An experiment was designed to investigate the locus of persistence of information about presentation modality for verbal stimuli. Twenty-four Ss were presented with a continuous series of 672 letter sequences for word/nonword categorization. The sequences were divided equally between words and nonwords, and each item was presented twice in the series, either in the same or in a different modality. Repetition facilitation, the advantage resulting from a second presentation, was greatest in the intramodality conditions for both words (+ve responses) and nonwords (-ve responses). Facilitation in these conditions declined from 170 msec at Lag 0 (4 sec) to approximately 40 msec at Lag 63. Facilitation was reduced in the cross-modality condition for words and was absent from the cross-modality condition for nonwords. The modality-specific component of the repetition effect found in the word/nonword categorization paradigm may be attributed to persistence in the nonlexical, as distinct from lexical, component of the word categorization process.A number of recent experiments (Hintzman, Block, & Inskeep, 1972;Kirsner, 1973;Craik & Kirsner, 1974) have shown that memory for the physical properties of verbal stimuli-features such as the modality of presentation, the case of visually presented letters, the sex of the speaker of auditorially presented words-lasts for a period too long to be accounted for in terms of echoic or iconic storage (Neisser, 1967). This experiment was concerned with examining how one of these physical features, namely, modality of presentation, is maintained in memory.One possibility is that the effect is a by-product of activation of the lexicon, the permanent memory system which translates stimulus events into the verbal code. If there exist separate auditory and visual lexica, then during the period that activation of a particular lexical unit persists, information about the modality of the stimulus event would be available. Once the encoding was completed and the activation had ceased, this information would be lost. A second possibility is that there is a single lexicon which is involved in encoding all verbal stimuli, regardless of modality of presentation, and that the retention of modality information resides with a different memory component which is not involved in semantic analysis.To differentiate between these two possibilities, a modification of a word identification paradigm introduced by Rubenstein, Lewis, and Rubenstein (197 I) was employed. Ss were exposed to a long series of letter sequences, half of which were common English words. The task was to classify each sequence as to whether or not it was an English word. In this experiment, each item in the continuous series was presented a second time after one of four possible intervals. Reaction time was measured, and the dependent variable was the decrease in the amount of time required to decide whether the sequence was a word when the stimulus was presented for the second time. Pilot work had indicated that such a repetition effe...

Episodic encoding of voice attributes and recognition memory for spoken words.

“…Improved recognition as a result of repetition of surface forms has been shown in a number of previous studies: Subjects exhibit increased recognition accuracy for words presented and repeated in the same modality, either auditory or visual (Kirsner & Craik, 1971;Kirsner & Smith, 1974); for words presented and repeated in the same typeface or case (Hintzman, Block, & Inskeep, 1972;Kirsner, 1973); and for sentences presented and repeated in the same inverted direction (Kolers & Ostry, 1974;Masson, 1984). Apparently, so-called redundant surface information, such as sensory modality, typeface, direction of text, or voice, is encoded and retained in memory and affects later performance, regardless of whether the task is implicit or explicit (see also Goldinger, 1992).…”

“…This finding demonstrated that voice information is available for explicit recognition. Explicit judgments about the attributes of repeated stimuli have been shown in previous studies: Subjects are able to recognize whether repeated letter strings were originally written in the same case or typeface (Hintzman et al, 1972;Kirsner, 1973); whether repeated words were originally presented in the same modality (Hintzman et al, 1972;Kirsner & Smith, 1974); whether verbal concepts were originally presented as pictures or visual words (Light, Stansbury, Rubin, & Linde, 1973); and whether utterances were originally spoken by a male or female talker (Craik & Kirsner, 1974;Hintzman et al, 1972;Light et al, 1973).…”

On the relationship between reading, listening, and speaking: It’s different for people’s names

“…Jacoby and Dallas (1981;Experiment 6) found significant facilitation of accuracy of visual iden-tification of briefly exposed words (35 msec) from prior study of visual words but no facilitation from prior study of auditory presentation of words. Kirsner and Smith (1974) and Kirsner, Milech, and Standen (1983) found that auditory presentation of primes produced significant priming of visual lexical decisions, but the priming effect was significantly smaller than that obtained from visual presentation ofprimes. Kirsner et al interpreted their results in terms of two loci of repetition priming: a modality-specific component that reflects facilitation ofword identification and a modality-free component that is associated with access to semantic representations.…”

Manipulation of familiarity reveals a necessary lexical component of the word-stem completion priming effect

“…For example, intact PI priming is found in normal and memoryimpaired subjects tested with pseudowords and unfamiliar words (Bowers, 1994(Bowers, , 1996Cermak et al, 1991;Haist et al, 1991;Keane et al, 1994;Kirsner & Smith, 1974;Postle & Corkin, 1998;Rueckl, 1990;Soloman & Postman, 1952;Whitlow & Cebollero, 1989;Whittlesea & Cantwell, 1987), indicating that the learning is supported by the biasing of prelexical perceptual mechanisms (i.e., the learning cannot take place at the level of lexical representations). Intact PI priming with the unfamiliar words used in the previous experiments would demonstrate a dissociation from WSC priming, suggesting that the two types of priming rely on different mechanisms.…”

“…Many memory researchers have employed this logic to elucidate the mechanisms of memory. The perceptual nature of PI priming has been demonstrated by robust priming effects with pseudowords or unfamiliar words in healthy subjects (Bowers, 1994(Bowers, , 1996Kirsner & Smith, 1974;Rueckl, 1990;Soloman & Postman, 1952;Whitlow & Cebollero, 1989;Whittlesea & Cantwell, 1987) and in amnesic subjects (Cermak, Verfaellie, Milberg, Letourneau, & Blackford, 1991;Haist et al, 1991;Postle & Corkin, 1998). An absence of nonword lexical decision priming was interpreted by Forbach and colleagues (Forbach et aI., 1974) to be consistent with a modification model oflexical decision priming.…”