Papers by Jonathan Grainger
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2010
Two experiments combined masked priming with event-related potential (ERP) recordings to examine ... more Two experiments combined masked priming with event-related potential (ERP) recordings to examine effects of primes that are orthographic neighbors of target words. Experiment 1 compared effects of repetition primes with effects of primes that were high-frequency orthographic neighbors of lowfrequency targets (e.g., faute-faune [error-wildlife]), and Experiment 2 compared the same word neighbor primes with nonword neighbor primes (e.g., aujel-autel [altar]). Word neighbor primes showed the standard inhibitory priming effect in lexical decision latencies that sharply contrasted with the facilitatory effects of nonword neighbor primes. This contrast was most evident in the ERP signal starting at around 300 ms posttarget onset and continuing through the bulk of the N400 component. In this time window, repetition primes and nonword neighbor primes generated more positive-going waveforms than unrelated primes, whereas word neighbor primes produced null effects. The results are discussed with respect to possible mechanisms of lexical competition during visual word recognition.
Stimulus orientation and the first-letter advantage
Acta Psychologica, Feb 1, 2018
A post-cued partial report target-in-string identification experiment examined the influence of s... more A post-cued partial report target-in-string identification experiment examined the influence of stimulus orientation on the serial position functions for strings of five consonants or five symbols, with an aim to test different accounts of the first-letter advantage observed in prior research. Under one account, this phenomenon is driven by processing that is specific to horizontally arranged letter (and digit) strings. An alternative account explains the first-letter advantage in terms of attentional biases towards the beginning of letter strings. We observed a significant three-way interaction between stimulus type (letters vs. symbols), serial position (1–5), and orientation (horizontal vs. vertical) that was driven by a greater first-position advantage for letters than symbols when stimuli were presented horizontally compared with vertical presentation. These results provide support for the letter-specific processing account of the first-letter advantage, and further suggest that differences in visual complexity between letters and symbols play a minor role. Nevertheless, a first-position advantage for letters was observed in the vertical presentation condition, thus pointing to some role for attentional biases that operate independently of string orientation.
MROM-p: An Interactive Activation, Multiple Readout Model of Orthographic and Phonological Processes in Visual Word Recognition
... in u and O over time follow the sigmoid function of an interactive activation network (McClel... more ... in u and O over time follow the sigmoid function of an interactive activation network (McClelland ... The evaluation of the plausibility of this coding scheme requires further investigation and ... Model Predictions and Tests Testing Strategy The literature provides no generally accepted ...
The Time Course of Visual Letter Perception
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Jul 1, 2012
We describe a novel method for tracking the time course of visual identification processes, here ... more We describe a novel method for tracking the time course of visual identification processes, here applied to the specific case of letter perception. We combine a new behavioral measure of letter identification times with single-letter ERP recordings. Letter identification processes are considered to take place in those time windows in which the behavioral measure and ERPs are correlated. A first significant correlation was found at occipital electrode sites around 100 msec poststimulus onset that most likely reflects the contribution of low-level feature processing to letter identification. It was followed by a significant correlation at fronto-central sites around 170 msec, which we take to reflect letter-specific identification processes, including retrieval of a phonological code corresponding to the letter name. Finally, significant correlations were obtained around 220 msec at occipital electrode sites that may well be due to the kind of recurrent processing that has been revealed recently by TMS studies. Overall, these results suggest that visual identification processes are likely to be composed of a first (and probably preconscious) burst of visual information processing followed by a second reentrant processing on visual areas that could be critical for the conscious identification of the visual target.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Jun 22, 2017
Previous studies have shown that different spatial frequency information processing streams inter... more Previous studies have shown that different spatial frequency information processing streams interact during the recognition of visual stimuli. However it is a matter of debate as to the contributions of high and low spatial frequency information for visual word recognition. This study examined the role of different spatial frequencies in visual word recognition using ERP masked priming. EEG was recorded from 32 scalp sites in 30 English-speaking adults in a go/no-go semantic categorization task. Stimuli were white characters on a neutral grey background. Targets were uppercase 5 letter words preceded by a forward-mask (#######) and a 50ms lowercase prime. Primes were either the same word (repeated) or a different word (un-repeated) than the subsequent target and either contained only high, only low, or full spatial frequency information. Additionally within each condition, half of the prime-target pairs were high lexical frequency, and half were low. In the full spatial frequency co...
On letter-specific crowding and reading: Evidence from ERPs
Neuropsychologia, Nov 1, 2022
The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, Aug 1, 2000
Critical issues in letter and word priming were investigated using the novel incremental priming ... more Critical issues in letter and word priming were investigated using the novel incremental priming technique. This technique adds a parametric manipulationof prime duration (or prime intensity) to the traditional design of a fast masked priming study. By doing so, additional information on the time course and nature of priming effects can be obtained. In Experiment 1, cross-case letter priming (a±A) was investigated in both alphabetic decision (letter/nonletter classi®cation) and letter naming. In Experiment 2, cross-case word priming was investigated in lexical decision and naming. Whereas letter priming in alphabetic decision was most strongly determined by visual overlap between prime and target, word priming in lexical decision was facilitated by both orthographic and phonological information. Orthographic activation was stronger and occurred earlier than phonological activation. In letter and word naming, in contrast, priming effects were most strongly determined by phonological/articulatory information. Differences and similarities between letter and word recognition are discussed in the light of the incremental priming data.
Psychological Science, Aug 1, 2005
Two masked priming experiments were conducted to examine phonological priming of bisyllabic words... more Two masked priming experiments were conducted to examine phonological priming of bisyllabic words in French, and in particular, whether it operates sequentially or in parallel. Bisyllabic target words were primed by pseudowords that shared either the first or the second phonological syllable of the target. Overlap of the first syllable only-not the second-produced facilitation in both the lexical decision and the naming tasks. These findings suggest that, for polysyllabic words, phonological codes are computed sequentially during silent reading and reading aloud.
Journal of Memory and Language, Oct 1, 1996
The effects of briefly presented, masked, and orthographically and/or phonologically related nonw... more The effects of briefly presented, masked, and orthographically and/or phonologically related nonword primes on the recognition of subsequently presented target words were investigated in different experimental tasks. Robust effects of orthographic and phonological priming were observed in both the lexical decision and the perceptual identification tasks, with no such effects appearing in the word naming task, except for orthographic priming effects at the shortest prime exposures. Further investigation of this marked dissociation across experimental tasks showed that word naming is particularly sensitive to shared onsets in the masked priming paradigm and that robust rhyme priming does occur when primes and targets have different onsets. The lexical decision task, on the other hand, showed priming effects independently of whether prime and targets shared onsets. These results are discussed within the framework of a bimodal interactive activation model of visual word recognition and naming.
Orthographic neighborhood density modulates the size of transposed-letter priming effects
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, May 6, 2021
We used transposed-letter (TL) priming to test the lexical tuning hypothesis, which states that w... more We used transposed-letter (TL) priming to test the lexical tuning hypothesis, which states that words from high-density orthographic neighborhoods have more precise orthographic codes than words from low-density neighborhoods. Replicating standard TL priming effects, target words elicited faster lexical decision responses and smaller amplitude N250s and N400s when preceded by TL primes (e.g., leomn-LEMON) compared with substitution primes (e.g., leuzn-LEMON) overall. We expected that if high-density words have more precise orthographic representations (i.e., with each letter assigned to a specific position), then they should be relatively less activated by TL primes and should give rise to smaller TL priming effects. In line with our prediction, N250 (but not N400 or behavioral) TL priming was significantly smaller for high-density words compared with low-density words over posterior sites. Such an interaction was not observed for pseudoword targets. Consistent with the lexical tuning hypothesis then, this pattern suggests that the nature of the orthographic code used to access lexical representations differs depending on the number of neighboring words in the lexicon. We conclude by discussing how lexical tuning could be implemented in current models of orthographic processing.
MROM-p: An Interactive Activation, Multiple Readout Model of Orthographic and Phonological Processes in Visual Word Recognition
... in u and O over time follow the sigmoid function of an interactive activation network (McClel... more ... in u and O over time follow the sigmoid function of an interactive activation network (McClelland ... The evaluation of the plausibility of this coding scheme requires further investigation and ... Model Predictions and Tests Testing Strategy The literature provides no generally accepted ...
Stimulus orientation and the first-letter advantage
Acta Psychologica, 2018
A post-cued partial report target-in-string identification experiment examined the influence of s... more A post-cued partial report target-in-string identification experiment examined the influence of stimulus orientation on the serial position functions for strings of five consonants or five symbols, with an aim to test different accounts of the first-letter advantage observed in prior research. Under one account, this phenomenon is driven by processing that is specific to horizontally arranged letter (and digit) strings. An alternative account explains the first-letter advantage in terms of attentional biases towards the beginning of letter strings. We observed a significant three-way interaction between stimulus type (letters vs. symbols), serial position (1–5), and orientation (horizontal vs. vertical) that was driven by a greater first-position advantage for letters than symbols when stimuli were presented horizontally compared with vertical presentation. These results provide support for the letter-specific processing account of the first-letter advantage, and further suggest that differences in visual complexity between letters and symbols play a minor role. Nevertheless, a first-position advantage for letters was observed in the vertical presentation condition, thus pointing to some role for attentional biases that operate independently of string orientation.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2014
One key finding in support of the hypothesis that written words are automatically parsed into com... more One key finding in support of the hypothesis that written words are automatically parsed into component morphemes independently of the true morphological structure of the stimuli, so-called morpho-orthographic segmentation, is that suffixed nonword primes facilitate the visual recognition of a stem target (rapidifier-RAPIDE) whereas non-suffixed primes (rapiduit-RAPIDE) do not. However, Morris, Porter, Grainger, and Holcomb (Language & Cognitive Processes, 26(4-6), 558-599, 2011)reported equivalent priming from suffixed and non-suffixed nonword primes, hence questioning the morphological nature of prior findings. Here we provide a further investigation of masked priming with morphologically complex nonword primes with an aim to isolate factors that modulate the size of these priming effects. We conducted a masked primed lexical decision experiment in French, in which the same target (TRISTE) was preceded by a suffixed word (tristesse), a suffixed nonword (tristerie), a non-suffixed nonword (tristald), or an unrelated prime word (direction). Participants were split into two groups, based on their language proficiency. The results show that in the high proficiency group, comparable magnitudes of priming were obtained in all three related prime conditions (including the nonsuffixed condition) relative to unrelated primes, whereas in the low proficiency group, priming was significantly reduced in the non-suffixed condition compared to the two suffixed conditions. These findings provide further evidence that individual differences in language proficiency can modulate the impact of morphological factors during reading, and an explanation for the discrepant findings in prior research.
Amorçage phonologique masqué et dénomination
L'année psychologique, 1995
Résumé II a été montré précédemment (Ferrand, Grainger et Segui, 1994) que le temps de dénominati... more Résumé II a été montré précédemment (Ferrand, Grainger et Segui, 1994) que le temps de dénomination du dessin d'un objet est facilité quand celui-ci est précédé par la présentation masquée de son nom ou d'un pseudo-homophone de celui-ci. Le but de la recherche présentée ici est de confirmer la nature phonologique de l'effet de facilitation en utilisant comme item amorce masqué un mot homophone mais non homographe du nom de l'objet. Les résultats obtenus montrent des effets de facilitation analogues pour les conditions de répétition et d'homophonie. Les mots «roue» et « roux » facilitent de manière comparable la dénomination du dessin d'une roue. Ces résultats suggèrent que l'effet de facilitation observé est indépendant de la relation sémantique existant entre le mot amorce et le nom de l'image. C'est le partage des propriétés phonologiques qui serait responsable de cette facilitation. Mots-clés : dénomination de dessins, amorçage phonologique, ma...
A dual read-out model of word context effects in letter perception: Further investigations of the word superiority effect
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1994
... the most influential simulation models of visual word recognition, the interactive activation... more ... the most influential simulation models of visual word recognition, the interactive activation model (IAM; McClelland & ... McClelland and Rumel-hart (1981) did entertain the idea of using read-out ... Grainger and Jacobs (1993a), where a simple letter frequency model was developed ...
Masked partial-word priming in visual word recognition: Effects of positional letter frequency
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1993
In 4 primed lexical decision experiments, it was found that the positional frequencies of letters... more In 4 primed lexical decision experiments, it was found that the positional frequencies of letters shared by the prime and target relative to the overall positional letter frequency of the target determined the magnitude of priming effects. The lower the positional frequency of shared letters, the stronger the facilitatory effect observed. Both an interactive and noninteractive semistochastic version of the interactive activation model captured the principal trends in the data. It is argued that masked partial-word priming arises from a tradeoff between the facilitation generated by prime-target letter overlap and the inhibition generated from all lexical representations activated by letters in the prime that receive further support on target presentation.
The Time Course of Visual Letter Perception
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2012
We describe a novel method for tracking the time course of visual identification processes, here ... more We describe a novel method for tracking the time course of visual identification processes, here applied to the specific case of letter perception. We combine a new behavioral measure of letter identification times with single-letter ERP recordings. Letter identification processes are considered to take place in those time windows in which the behavioral measure and ERPs are correlated. A first significant correlation was found at occipital electrode sites around 100 msec poststimulus onset that most likely reflects the contribution of low-level feature processing to letter identification. It was followed by a significant correlation at fronto-central sites around 170 msec, which we take to reflect letter-specific identification processes, including retrieval of a phonological code corresponding to the letter name. Finally, significant correlations were obtained around 220 msec at occipital electrode sites that may well be due to the kind of recurrent processing that has been reveal...
Phonology and Orthography in Visual Word Recognition: Evidence from Masked Non-Word Priming
The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, Sep 1, 1992
Three lexical decision experiments in French investigated the effects of briefly presented forwar... more Three lexical decision experiments in French investigated the effects of briefly presented forward-masked non-word primes on latencies to phonologically and/or orthographically related targets. At 64-msec prime presentation durations, primes that are pseudohomophones of the target produced facilitatory effects compared to orthographic controls, but these orthographically similar non-word primes did not facilitate target recognition compared to unrelated controls. These results were obtained independently of target word frequency and independently of the presence or absence of pseudohomophone targets in the experimental lists. With a 32-msec prime duration, on the other hand, pseudohomophone and orthographic primes had similar effects on target recognition, both producing facilitation relative to unrelated controls. The results are discussed in terms of the time course of phonological and orthographic code activation in the processing of pronounceable strings of letters.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2012
Effects of non-adjacent flanking elements on crowding of letter stimuli were examined in experime... more Effects of non-adjacent flanking elements on crowding of letter stimuli were examined in experiments manipulating the number of flanking elements and the deployment of spatial attention. To this end, identification accuracy of single letters was compared with identification of letter targets surrounded by two, four, or six flanking elements placed symmetrically left and right of the target. Target stimuli were presented left or right of a central fixation, and appeared either unilaterally or with an equivalent number of characters in the contralateral visual field (bilateral presentation). Experiment 1A tested letter targets with random letter flankers, and Experiments 1B and 2 tested letter targets with Xs as flanking stimuli. The results revealed a number of flankers effect that extended beyond standard two-flanker crowding. Flanker interference was stronger with random letter flankers compared with homogeneous Xs, and performance was systematically better under unilateral present...
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Papers by Jonathan Grainger