暗微幽光

Naming task is a frequently used method in the psycholinguistic discipline. The procedure is simple: the participants read the word aloud as quickly and accurately as they can, and the data collection is easy: the experimenters are able to record the time during stimuli displayed and the voice key triggered (the sound blaster card is the frequently available device presently). This elapsed time, which is termed naming latency, is the dependent variable the researchers have to analyze in the end. This task is popular in the discipline because it is sensitive to the lexical factors, such as word frequency, which construct the fundamental processing of human language.

As the other dependent variables in psychological research, the naming latency reflects not only the nature of lexical processing but also the demand for executing pronounce. To measure the naming latency actually been attributed to the lexical processing, the delayed naming was introduced to measure the part of latency purely spent on the execution level. If the time for execution is estimated, then the rest of naming latency will be the time for completing the lexical processing. This notion stands on a core assumption of delayed naming: a sufficient long delay always effectively isolate the execution level processes. However, this assumption has never been confirmed since the delayed naming was introduced to the psycholinguistic discipline. This is the Kawamoto and his colleagues’ mission in their study (Kawamoto et al., 2008).

Sternberg and his colleagues’ theory of motor control and execution specifies the constituents of delayed naming latency, and Kawamoto’s crew find one of them are not as fixed as the traditional core assumption. In Sternberg’s theory, a delayed naming latency contains the base time to detect the response signal (Tb), the retrieval time for the stimulus (S), and the unpacking time for the subprogram of the stimulus (U). Because our mouth needs some time to prepare for articulation, Kawamoto’s crew suggest an alternative term for representing the execution time for the stimulus (C). In the experimental circumstance, the execution time is the interval of articulator onset (start to move necessary muscle) to acoustic onset (start to generate the acoustic energy); I use the short term AAI in the following.  The components, S, U, and C compromise the chain of execution that the processing time is anticipated to be measured by the delayed naming. There is one internal factor and one external factor Kawamoto team suggests causing the variation of AAI. The internal factor is the manner of articulation, plosive or non-plosive word-initiation. Past studies (in summary of Lehiste, 1970) have found the fact that the intra-oral pressure is necessary for building up plosives, so that their acoustic energy typically generate about 50-100 ms later than non-plosives. It has to be noted that a significant difference between
two critical conditions is generally as short as 25-40 ms. The external factor cared by Kawamoto team refers to the preparation for releasing the chain of execution. In the traditional view of delayed naming, this chain of execution initiates after the signal to response showed. On the Kawamoto’s side, this chain has began its operation following the pre-execution level process and before the signal to response. If Kawamoto team’s argument is right, to estimate the naming latency for the execution level processing is impossibly. However, worse than this is that the variation of AAI would cover the range from before to after the signal to response due to the content of experimental instruction.

Kawamoto team’s experiments indicated that the longer delay duration not only increases the magnitude of AAI but also decreases the difference of acoustic latency between plosives and non-plosives. These results support their argument that the manner of articulation indeed decides the length of AAI and the initial time of generating acoustic energy with the delay duration. Their final experiment showed that the chain of execution always starts in advance of the signal to response. In this experiment, the difference of acoustic latency between plosives and non-plosives appears in the standard naming and the delayed naming with partial preparation (e.g., put the tongue on the teeth while waiting signal). These findings mean the delayed naming just cutting the tail of the execution level processing, rather than all of the processing in the traditional view.

Prof. Kawamoto proposes his worry about the case like delayed naming generally affecting the tasks in the psycholinguistic discipline. I am still optimistic that the standard naming task is able to offer valid latency data in measuring the impact of lexical processing. Firstly the chain of execution is temporarily abandoned in the standard naming. There is no time for retrieval and unpacking in this circumstance. The variation of AAI is what we only have to concern, and the manner of articulation is the primary factor influencing its variation. With the well-designed experimental comparison and the appropriate analysis technique, we could restrict its affection on the naming latency.

Kawamoto, A. H., Liu, Q., Mura, K., & Sanchez, A. (2008). Articulatory preparation in the delayed naming task. Journal of Memory and Language, 58(2), 347-365. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2007.06.002

At the second day I became a member of University Richmond CogSci Lab, I know this article from my colleage. They have made a large-sample study about Chinese character(word) naming. Their research strategy is measuring the relations between 15 variables and the resulted pattern of 39 partisipants’ naming responses to 2423 Chinese characters. The 15 variables include 8 types of initial phoneme ( 7 onset phoneme and null onset), 3 classes of regularity (regular, irregular, and bound/ no phonetic part), frequency of character being a single word, cumulative frequency of character appearing in each word, number of formation (type frequency of a character), homophone density(type frequency of a sound), phonological frequency (token frequency of a sound), number of meanings, number of strokes, number of components, age of learning(first time contacting the character on textbook), age of acquisition(fristly understanding the meaning and pronounciation), familiarity, concreteness, and imageability. Inaddition to the initial phoneme to the age of learning have been collected by previous studies, the authors designed a subjective rating of the resting four variables for desiding the features.

The relations of resulted naming latency and variables were analyzed by the correlation, the multiple regression analysis, and the principle component factor analysis. Their new findings in this study has: 1. the impact of frequency on naming latency was larger for the late acquired character than for the early acquired character; the semantic variables, including concreteness, imagiability, and familarity, loaded 18.46 % of naming latency according to their PCA, which is higher than the variables concerning orthography and phonology.

This study seems provide a implication that the lexical variables, such as word frequency, has the important influence on naming Chinese single character, then the semantic variables and orthographic variables take significant roles. But the phonological variables, such as initial phoneme, does not contribute to the naming performance as important as the alphabetic languages.

Liu, Y., Shu, H., & Li, P. (2007). Word naming and psycholinguistic norms: Chinese. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 192-198.

!!!Give me a mail before you want to copy this article to your storaged device or cite in your literature. !!!

In this post, I attempt to summarize the Jared’s studies of consistency and regularity effects in 1997 and 2002. This summary assist me over-viewing the critical questions in this issue, and remind me the key concepts when I am planning my research projects.

The main contribution of Jared(1997) is her fine-grained work of measuring consistency effects accross word frequency in the well-controlled neighborhood characteristics. According to Jared’s review, the past studies investigated the regularity and consistency effects by comparing the responses of consistent words with higher summed frequency of friends and those of inconsistent words with lower summed frequency of friends. This confound in neighborhood characteristics caused stablly significant but possibly overestimated effect in the low-frequency words. In addition, the high-frequency inconsistent words with lower summed frequency of friends was rarely investigated before 1997. Under this background, Jared designed a series of experiments to measure the magnitudes of consistency effect with the extreme neighborhood characteristic (F<E). Her findings revealed either the high and low words with this neighborhood characteristic caused significant consistency effects which eliminate the interaction of frequency and consistency as well. She also indicated that the neighborhood characteristic (F<E) is necessity of resulted significant consistency and regularity effects for the high frequency words.

(Collect Comments on Jared Here)

Based on the 1997 work, Jared continuouely addressed the best spelling-sound correspondence (regularity or consistency) characterizing the difficulty associated with naming responses and the changing pattern of correspondence effects with the word frequency. She answered these questions based on two criterions: first is the interaction of consistency(inconsistency vs. consistency) and the type of inconsistency (exception vs. regular-inconsistency); second is the interaction of word frequency (high vs. low) and regularity (exception vs. regular-consistency) matched on neighborhood characteristic. If the spelling-sound consistency contribute more to the correspondence effect than the spelling-sound regularity, both the interactions would be eliminated. Her experiments showed the first interaction weak in latency data but strong interactions in error data. Based on these findings, she issued the best characteristic to the spelling-sound consistency but agreed the impact of regularity on naming perfomance to some extent. As for the interaction of frequency and consistency, her experiments confirmed the nieghborhood characteristics deciding the resutled latency but the resulted error.

Jared suggested the frequency by regularity/consistency effects showing  knowledge of spelling-sound correspondence gained from other words is not sufficient to produce a correct pronunciation (EXC, F<E) and much weaker for words whose pronunciations can benefit to a greater extent from such knowledge (EXC, F>E). This suggestion leaves a hypothesis about the processing of exception words with unique word body (e.g., HEART) may been facilitated primarily by word frequency. A significant interaction of frequency and regularity effect of unique word boyd should be predictable. She wished to design an experiment to confirm this hypothesis, but too few such words in CELEX supported her idea. In my research experience of Chinese character naming, there are more opinions for testing this hypothesis.

Jared, D. (1997). Spelling-sound consistency affects the naming of high-frequency words. Journal of Memory and Language, 36(4), 505-529.
Jared, D. (2002). Spelling-sound consistency and regularity effects in word naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(4), 723-750.