The role of syllabic and orthographic properties of letter cues in solving word fragments

Abstract

The present research examined the role of phonological and orthographic properties of cues in mediating the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon. The task required subjects to resolve fragmented words when provided with semantically related cues (e.g., spiteful: DIC ). Phonological properties of the letter cues were manipulated such that the letters either corresponded to the syllables (e.g., DIC in vindictive) or nonsyllables (NDI) in the word. Orthographic properties of the letter cues were manipulated by selecting letter groups that either co-occurred frequently in the language or did not. In two experiments, results revealed little or no effect of the phonological variable (syllables) but a reliable effect of the orthographic variable (letter-cue frequency). Letter cues with a low frequency of co-occurrence in the language led to better completion of the fragmented words. We interpret these findings as support for models oflexical representation that are based on orthographic properties (e.g., Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989)rather than those based on phonological constraints.The research reported in this paper is directed at the issue of how our mental lexicon is organized. To explore the issue, we used a task, the crossword-puzzle-solving paradigm, that Goldblum and Frost (1988) developed for this purpose. In this task, subjects are required to solve fragmented words given semantic cues (e.g., spiteful: ___ DIC ). By manipulating the properties of the letter cues provided, it is possible to determine whether a particular property is represented in the mental lexicon. Using this procedure, Goldblum and Frost concluded that syllables play an important role in mediating word retrieval in this task and that syllables form an important part of lexical representation. However, before describing our own research using their paradigm, we review related research in the area of word recognition that also addresses the issue of lexical representation.A common assumption of many theories of word recognition is that complex words are represented in the mental lexicon in sublexical units that mediate access to the words. The nature of these sublexical units varies with the theory in question. For example, in Spoehr and Smith's (1973) model of visual word recognition, the sublexical units are assumed to be syllable-like units called

Effects of dividing attention on the memory-block effect.

“…This is relevant to the finding in the visual word recognition literature that “ TL ” words (words that can produce another word by transposing adjacent internal letters, e.g., SLAT / SALT ) take longer to be recognized than matched control words, suggesting that the presentation of SLAT also activates SALT (Andrews, 1996; Chambers, 1979). Thus, the memory block paradigm (and, more broadly, the fragment completion task) may offer visual word recognition researchers novel ways to study the links between words and their components (for an example of such a study, see Srinivas, Roediger, & Rajaram, 1992).…”

The internal structure of chaos: Letter category determines visual word perceptual units

“…According to the authors, readers store rules of spelling (identity and position of legal consonant and vocalic clusters, see also Gibson, 1965Gibson, , 1971) and this orthographic knowledge on letter co-occurrences enables readers to extract perceptual units without relying on phonological information. Similarly, Seidenberg (1987) proposed that letter cluster frequencies are prominent cues for word parsing into perceptual units (see also Adams, 1981;Srinivas, Roediger, & Rajaram, 1992). In particular, Seidenberg (1987) suggested that illusory conjunction effects were determined by the relative frequencies of adjacent bigrams, and more specifically by a bigram trough pattern, that is, a low frequency bigram surrounded by higher frequency ones on both sides.…”

Interactive Effects of Age-of-Acquisition and Repetition Priming in the Lexical Decision Task

“…In a recent experiment, Spataro, Mulligan, Longobardi, and Rossi-Arnaud (2012) showed a similar interaction in the implicit task of word-fragment completion, which is primarily based on the retrieval of the orthographic properties of the studied words (Srinivas, Roediger, & Rajaram, 1992). They replicated the finding that the amount of repetition priming (i.e., higher completion rates for fragments corresponding to studied than to unstudied items) was greater for LA than for EA words.…”