Jon Andoni Duñabeitia

A recently accepted paper in JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

2011-12-06T14:10:00.003Z

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Maria Dimitropoulou, Jonathan Grainger, Juan Andrés Hernández and Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Differential sensitivity of letters, numbers and symbols to character transpositions.

Abstract:
The present study was designed to explore whether the human visual system has different degrees of tolerance to character position changes for letter strings, digit strings and symbol strings. An explicit perceptual matching task was used (same-different judgment), and participants’ electrophysiological activity was recorded. Materials included trials in which the referent stimulus and the target stimulus were identical, or differed either by two character replacements, or by transposing two characters. Behavioral results showed clear differences in the magnitude of the transposed-character effect for letters as compared to digit and symbol strings. Electrophysiological data confirmed this observation, showing an N2 character-transposition effect that was only present for letter strings. An earlier N1 transposition effect was also found for letters, but was absent for symbols and digits, while a later P3 effect was found for all types of string. These results provide evidence for a position coding mechanism that is specific to letter strings, that was most prominent in an epoch between 200 and 325 milliseconds, and that operates in addition to more general-purpose position coding mechanisms.

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A recently accepted paper in NEUROIMAGE

2011-11-03T20:08:00.004Z

Authors: Nicola Molinaro, Manuel Carreiras and Jon Andoni Duñabeitia

Title: Semantic combinatorial processing of non-anomalous expressions.

Abstract:
In this study, semantic meaning composition is investigated focusing on the ERP correlates of reading of minimal Spanish noun-adjective pairs. Comprehending these constructs requires combining the concepts expressed by nouns with the - not contextually expected - semantic feature expressed by the adjectives. Previous studies have mainly focused on the processing of either semantic anomalies or contextually expected target words; we focus on the comprehension of more natural expressions, manipulating the typicality of the noun-adjective relation. In two different ERP experiments, compared to neutral pairs (monstruo solitario, lonely monster), only anomalous adjectives (monstruo geográfico, geographic monster) elicited increased N400, the effect classically associated with lexical/semantic processing. Low-typicality adjectives that apparently contrasted with the inherent prototypical features associated with the noun (monstruo hermoso, lovely monster) elicited a long-lasting frontal late positive effect (LPC, 550-750 ms) in Experiment 1; high-typicality adjectives that expressed redundant information (monstruo horrible, horrible monster) elicited a similar, but shorter, positivity (550-650 ms) in Experiment 2. These findings suggest that the combination of non-anomalous noun-adjective pairs involves additional neurocognitive resources to the ones represented by the N400. Correlation analyses indicate that the LPC is associated with a meta-linguistic analysis of the expressions: a significant inverse correlation was found between the stimuli's naturality and the amplitude of the LPC.

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A recently accepted paper in APPLIED PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

2011-09-02T09:10:00.001+01:00

Authors: Elisabeth Beyersmann, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Manuel Carreiras, Max Coltheart, Anne Castles.

Title: Early morphological decomposition of suffixed words: Masked priming evidence with transposed-letter nonword primes.

Abstract:
Many studies have previously reported that the recognition of a stem target (e.g. teach) is facilitated by the prior masked presentation of a prime consisting of a derived form of it (e.g. teacher). We conducted two lexical decision experiments to investigate masked morphological priming in Spanish. Experiment 1 showed that equal magnitudes of masked stem-target priming are obtained for both morphologically complex word primes (e.g. doloroso-DOLOR [painful-PAIN]) and morphologically complex nonword primes that included letter transpositions within the stem (e.g. dlooroso-DOLOR). Experiment 2 used morphologically complex nonword primes comprising lexically illegal combinations of stems and suffixes (e.g. total + ito [a little total]). Priming was obtained for morphologically related nonword primes (e.g. totalito-TOTAL), but not for nonword primes that included letter transpositions within the pseudo-stem (e.g. ttoalito-TOTAL). Our data suggest that morpho-orthographic parsing mechanisms benefit from semantic constraints at early stages in the reading system, which we discuss in the context of current morphological processing accounts.

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A recently accepted paper in PLoS ONE

2011-08-29T19:20:00.002+01:00

Authors: Stéphane Dufau, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Carmen Moret-Tatay, Aileen McGonigal, David Peeters, Francois-Xavier Alario, David A. Balota, Marc Brysbaert, Manuel Carreiras, Ludovic Ferrand, Maria Ktori, Manuel Perea, Kathy Rastle, Olivier Sasburg, Melvin J. Yap, Johannes C. Ziegler and Jonathan Grainger.

Title: Smart Phone, Smart Science: How the Use of Smartphones Can Revolutionize Research in Cognitive Science.

Abstract:
Investigating human cognitive faculties such as language, attention, and memory most often relies on testing small and homogeneous groups of volunteers coming to research facilities where they are asked to participate in behavioral experiments. We show that this limitation and sampling bias can be overcome by using smartphone technology to collect data in cognitive science experiments from thousands of subjects from all over the world. This mass coordinated use of smartphones creates a novel and powerful scientific “instrument” that yields the data necessary to test universal theories of cognition. This increase in power represents a potential revolution in cognitive science.

LINK TO THE PAPER:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024974

A recently accepted paper in FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY

2011-07-25T20:18:00.002+01:00

Authors: Maria Dimitropoulou, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Two words, one meaning: Evidence of automatic co-activation of translation equivalents.

Abstract:
Research on the processing of translations offers important insights on how bilinguals negotiate the representation of words from two languages in one mind and one brain. Evidence so far has shown that translation equivalents effectively activate each other as well as their shared concept even when translations lack of any formal overlap (i.e., non-cognates) and even when one of them is presented subliminally, namely under masked priming conditions. In the lexical decision studies testing masked translation priming effects with unbalanced bilinguals a remarkably stable pattern emerges: larger effects in the dominant (L1) to the non-dominant (L2) translation direction, than vice versa. Interestingly, this asymmetry vanishes when simultaneous and balanced bilinguals are tested, suggesting that the linguistic profile of the bilinguals could be determining the pattern of cross-language lexico-semantic activation across the L2 learning trajectory. The present study aims to detect whether L2 proficiency is the critical variable rendering the otherwise asymmetric cross-language activation of translations obtained in the lexical decision task into symmetric. Non-cognate masked translation priming effects were examined with three groups of Greek (L1)-English (L2) unbalanced bilinguals, differing exclusively at their level of L2 proficiency. Although increased L2 proficiency led to improved overall L2 performance, masked translation priming effects were virtually identical across the three groups, yielding in all cases significant but asymmetric effects (i.e., larger effects in the L1→L2 than in the L2→L1 translation direction). These findings show that proficiency does not modulate masked translation priming effects at intermediate levels, and that a native-like level of L2 proficiency is needed for symmetric effects to emerge. They furthermore, pose important constraints on the operation of the mechanisms underlying the development of cross-language lexico-semantic links.

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A recently accepted paper in FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY

2011-06-09T18:48:00.002+01:00

Authors: Frédéric Dandurand, Jonathan Grainger, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Jean-Pierre Granier.

Title: On Coding Non-Contiguous Letter Combinations

Abstract:
Starting from the hypothesis that printed word identification initially involves the parallel mapping of visual features onto location-specific letter identities, we analyze the type of information that would be involved in optimally mapping this location-specific orthographic code onto a location-invariant lexical code. We assume that some intermediate level of coding exists between individual letters and whole words, and that this involves the representation of letter combinations. We then investigate the nature of this intermediate level of coding given the constraints of optimality. This intermediate level of coding is expected to compress data while retaining as much information as possible about word identity. Information conveyed by letters is a function of how much they constrain word identity and how visible they are. Optimization of this coding is a combination of minimizing resources (using the most compact representations) and maximizing information. We show that in a large proportion of cases, non-contiguous letter sequences contain more information than contiguous sequences, while at the same time requiring less precise coding. Moreover, we found that the best predictor of human performance in orthographic priming experiments was within-word ranking of conditional probabilities, rather than average conditional probabilities. We conclude that from an optimality perspective, readers learn to select certain contiguous and non-contiguous letter combinations as information that provides the best cue to word identity.

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A recently accepted paper in PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW

2011-03-23T16:04:00.002Z

Authors: Maria Dimitropoulou, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia and Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Transliteration and transcription effects in bi-scriptal readers: The case of Greeklish

Abstract:
In order to overcome limitations associated with script incompatibilities Greek users of the Internet have developed Greeklish, a transliterated version of Modern Greek using Roman characters. The representational status of this artificial writing system was examined in two masked priming lexical decision experiments using Greeklish primes with different degrees of graphemic overlap with their corresponding Greek targets. Results suggested that Greeklish primes were effectively processed and transliterated to their Greek counterparts. Larger masked priming effects were found as a function of increased prime- target graphemic overlap. Interestingly, these Greeklish priming effects were in all cases of smaller magnitude than the pure Greek identity priming effect. Our findings revealed that extensive experience with a recently developed artificial writing system leads to its non- effortful processing, but that even for highly experienced Greeklish users the Greeklish-to- Greek conversion is modulated by the graphemic properties of the input stimulus.

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A recently accepted paper in JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: LEARNING, MEMORY AND COGNITION

2011-03-15T08:52:00.007Z

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia and Manuel Carreiras.

Title: The relative position priming effect depends on whether letters are vowels or consonants

Abstract:
The relative position priming effect is a type of subset priming in which target word recognition is facilitated as a consequence of priming the word with some of its letters, maintaining their relative position (e.g., csn as a prime for casino). Five experiments were conducted to test if vowel-only and consonant-only subset primes contribute equally to this effect. Experiment 1 revealed that this subset priming effect emerged when primes were composed exclusively of consonants, as compared to vowel-only primes (csn-casino vs. aia-animal). Experiment 2 tested the impact of letter frequency in this asymmetry. Subset priming effects were obtained for both high and low frequency consonants, but not for vowels, which rules out a letter frequency explanation. Experiment 3 tested the role of phonology and its contribution to the priming effects observed, by decreasing the prime duration. The results showed virtually the same effects as in the previous experiments. Finally, Experiments 4 and 5 explored the influence of repeated letters in the primes on the magnitude of the priming effects obtained for consonant and vowel subset primes (iuo-dibujo and aea-madera vs. mgn-imagen and rtr-frutero). Again, the results confirmed the priming asymmetry. We propose that a functional distinction between consonants and vowels, mainly based on the lexical constraints imposed by each of these types of letters, might provide an explanation for the whole set of results.

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A recently accepted paper in JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE

2011-01-24T16:32:00.002Z

Authors: Kevin Diependaele, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Joanna Morris and Emmanuel Keuleers.

Title: Fast Morphological Effects in First and Second Language Word Recognition

Abstract: In three experiments we compared the performance of native English speakers to that of Spanish-English and Dutch-English bilinguals on a masked morphological priming lexical decision task. The results do not show significant differences across the three experiments. In line with recent meta-analyses, we observed a graded pattern of facilitation across stem priming with transparent suffixed primes (e.g., viewer-view), opaque suffixed or pseudo-suffixed primes (e.g., corner-corn) and form control primes (e.g., freeze-free). Priming was largest in the transparent condition, smallest in the form condition and intermediate in the opaque condition. Our data confirm the hypothesis that bilinguals largely adopt the same processing strategies as native speakers (e.g., Lemhöfer et al., 2008), and constrain the hypothesis that bilinguals rely more heavily on whole-word processing in their second language (Ullman, 2004, 2005; Clahsen et al., 2010). The observed pattern of morphological priming is in line with earlier monolingual studies, further highlighting the reality of semantic transparency effects in the initial stages of word recognition.

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A recently accepted paper in FRONTIERS IN LANGUAGE SCIENCES

2010-11-16T15:58:00.001Z

Authors: Maria Dimitropoulou, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Alberto Avilés, José Corral and Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Subtitle-based word frequencies as the best estimate of reading behaviour: the case of Greek

Abstract: Previous evidence has shown that word frequencies calculated from corpora based on film and television subtitles can readily account for reading performance, since the language used in subtitles greatly approximates everyday language. The present study examines this issue in a society with increased exposure to subtitle reading. We compiled SUBTLEX-GR, a subtitled-based corpus consisting of more than 23 million Modern Greek words, and tested to what extent subtitle-based frequency estimates and those taken from a written corpus of Modern Greek account for the lexical decision performance of young Greek adults who are exposed to subtitle reading on a daily basis. Results showed that SUBTLEX-GR frequency estimates effectively accounted for participants’ reading performance in two different visual word recognition experiments. More importantly, different analyses showed that frequencies estimated from a subtitle corpus explained the obtained results significantly better than traditional frequencies derived from written corpora.

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A recently accepted paper in NEUROIMAGE

2010-10-28T17:12:00.004+01:00

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Nicola Molinaro and Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Through the looking-glass: Mirror reading

Abstract: At early stages of object identification we process correctly-oriented and mirrored versions of an object similarly. However, in letter and word perception, such tolerance to mirror reversals is harmful for efficient reading. Do readers successfully develop blindness mechanisms for mirror-letters and words? We conducted two masked priming experiments while recording participants’ electrophysiological brain responses to briefly presented primes including mirror-letters (Experiment 1) or to shortly presented mirror-words (Experiment 2). Results showed that the human visual word recognition system is not totally blind to mirror-letters and mirror-words, since at early stages of processing mirror-letters and mirror-words produced effects on target word recognition that were highly similar to the effects produced by identical primes (N250 component). In a posterior stage of processing (N400 epoch), the effect of mirror-letters and mirror-words were different from the effect of identical primes, even though reversed primes still elicited N400 priming effects different from unrelated primes. These results demonstrate that readers perceive mirror-letters and words as correct at initial stages of word recognition, and that the visual word recognition system’s neural representation is grounded on basic principles that govern object perception.

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A recently accepted paper in BRAIN RESEARCH

2010-08-20T09:00:00.003+01:00

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Maria Dimitropoulou, Oxel Uribe-Etxeberria, Itziar Laka and Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Electrophysiological correlates of the masked translation priming effect with highly proficient simultaneous bilinguals

Abstract: In the present study, we examined whether there is a symmetrical masked translation priming effect for non-cognate words in a group of highly proficient (native-like) Basque-Spanish simultaneous bilinguals using event-related brain potentials. Participants were presented with a set of Spanish and Basque words that could be preceded by their repetitions (an identity condition), their translations in the other language, or by two unrelated words (one in each language). Results showed a significant masked repetition effect for Spanish as well as for Basque targets, mainly evident in the N250 and N400 components. Interestingly, a masked translation priming effect was also found in the N400 component in both language directions (L1-to-L2 and L2-to-L1). Furthermore, the magnitude of the N400 modulation for the translation priming effect was similar in the two directions. Finally, we also found a language switch cost effect in the N250 and N400 components, associated with primes (related and unrelated) that did not match the target word’s language. This language switch cost effect was also highly similar across the two language directions.

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A recently accepted paper in LANGUAGE & COGNITIVE PROCESSES

2010-06-01T13:39:00.004+01:00

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Sachiko Kinoshita, Manuel Carreiras, & Dennis Norris.

Title: Is morpho-orthographic decomposition purely orthographic? Evidence from masked priming in the same-different task

Abstract: Two experiments used the cross-case same-different task to test whether the orthographically driven morphological decomposition effects that have been found in the lexical decision task are obligatory. Experiment 1 replicated the manipulation used by Duñabeitia, Perea, and Carreiras (2007), testing transposed-letter priming effects spanning the boundary between the affix and the stem. In contrast to their finding observed with the lexical decision task, transposed-letter priming effect did not vanish with polymorphemic or pseudomorphemic words. Experiment 2 used the manipulation used by Rastle, Davis, and New (2004), comparing the effects of polymorphemic affixed words (e.g., walker), pseudo-affixed words (e.g., corner), and non-affixed monomorphemic words (e.g., brothel) in target word recognition. Unlike the results observed in the original lexical decision study, equal priming effects were observed with all three types of words. These results suggest that the presence of an orthographically defined subunit (affix) is not sufficient to drive morphological decomposition processes.

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A recently accepted paper in MEMORY & COGNITION

2010-05-27T18:15:00.002+01:00

Authors: Maria Dimitropoulou, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Masked translation priming effects with low proficient bilinguals

Abstract: Non-cognate masked translation priming lexical decision studies with unbalanced bilinguals suggest that masked translation priming effects are asymmetric as a function of the translation direction (significant effects only in the dominant (L1) to non-dominant (L2) language translation direction). However, in contrast to the predictions of most current accounts of masked translation priming effects, bi-directional effects have been recently reported in a group of low proficient bilinguals (Duyck & Warlop, 2009). In a series of masked translation priming lexical decision experiments we examined whether the same pattern of effects would emerge with late and low proficient Greek (L1)-Spanish (L2) bilinguals. Contrary to the results obtained by Duyck and Warlop, and in line with the results found in most studies in the masked priming literature, significant translation priming effects emerged only when the bilinguals performed the task with L1 primes and L2 targets. The existence of the masked translation priming asymmetry with low proficient bilinguals suggests that cross-linguistic automatic lexico-semantic links may be established very early in the process of L2 acquisition. These findings could help to define models of bilingualism that consider L2 proficiency level as a determining factor.

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A recently accepted paper in EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

2010-03-09T13:44:00.003Z

Authors: Maria Dimitropoulou, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Phonology by itself: Masked phonological priming effects with and without orthographic overlap

Abstract: The activation of the phonological code plays a central role in visual word recognition. However, it is still unclear how this activation is integrated within this mainly bottom-up process. In the present masked priming study we combined Greek and Spanish, two languages with common phonemes and partially overlapping graphemes to investigate this issue. Greek-Spanish bilinguals performed lexical decisions on Greek and Spanish targets, briefly preceded by either phonologically related or orthographically and phonologically related prime words of the non-target language. Results revealed significant bi-directional cross-script masked phonological priming effects which disappeared under the influence of nearly overlapping orthographic representations. This pattern of effects suggests that there is fast and automatic language non-selective activation of the phonological code during the initial stages of visual word recognition but that this is clearly dependent on the orthographic properties of the input stimulus. The implications of our findings are discussed within the framework of current models of monolingual and bilingual visual word recognition.

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A recently accepted paper in NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA

2009-12-23T11:38:00.003Z

Authors: Nicola Molinaro, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Alejandro Marín-Gutiérrez & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: From numbers to letters: Feedback regularization in visual word recognition

Abstract: Word reading in alphabetic languages involves letter identification, independently of the format in which these letters are written. This process of letter ‘regularization’ is sensitive to word context, leading to the recognition of a word even when numbers that resemble letters are inserted among other real letters (e.g., M4TERI4L). The present study investigates the electrophysiological correlates of number-to-letter regularization by means of the masked priming paradigm: target words (MATERIAL) were preceded by fully alphabetic primes (MATERIAL), primes with letter-like numbers (M4T3R14L), or primes with unrelated numbers (M7T6R28L). ERPs revealed three subsequent effects. Around 150 ms the unrelated numbers condition elicited a positive effect, compared to the other two conditions, in the occipital electrodes. Then, target words preceded by primes with numbers elicited a more negative N200 in the same electrodes compared to the fully alphabetic condition. Finally, both alphabetic primes and letter-like numbers elicited a posterior positive component peaking around 260 ms compared to unrelated numbers. Source analysis for each electrophysiological effect revealed a similar early increase of activity in the left occipito-temporal pathway for alphabetic primes and primes with letter-like numbers. Around 200 ms, the orthographic interference due to the numerical values correlated with an increase of activity in parietal areas; finally, a recursive effect in the left occipital cortex was found, reflecting abstract letter activation. These results indicate that direct feedback interaction from word units strongly influences the activation of the letter units at a format-independent abstract level.

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A recently accepted paper in QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

2009-12-05T22:13:00.002Z

Authors: Maria Dimitropoulou, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Influence of prime lexicality, frequency and pronounceability on the masked onset priming effect

Abstract: The present study investigates the origins of the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). There are two alternative interpretations that account for most of the evidence reported on the MOPE, so far. The Speech Planning account (SP) identifies the locus of the MOPE in the preparation of the speech response. In contrast, the dual-route theory proposes that the effect arises as a result of the processing of the prime by the nonlexical route. In a series of masked onset priming word naming experiments we test the validity of these accounts by manipulating the primes’ frequency, their lexical status and pronounceability. We found consistent MOPEs of similar magnitude with high and low frequency prime words as well as with pronounceable nonwords. Contrarily, when primes consisted of unpronounceable consonantal strings the effect disappeared, suggesting that pronounceability of the prime is a prerequisite for the emergence of the MOPE. These results are in accordance with the predictions of the SP account. The pattern of effects obtained in the present study further defines the origins of the MOPE.

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A recently accepted paper in COGNITION

2009-11-24T18:03:00.005Z

Authors: Manuel Carreiras, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Marta Vergara, Irene de la Cruz-Pavía & Itziar Laka.

Title: Subject Relative Clauses are not universally easier to process: Evidence from Basque

Abstract: Studies from many languages consistently report that Subject Relative clauses (SR) are easier to process than Object Relatives (OR). However, Hsiao & Gisbon (2003) report an OR preference for Chinese, a finding that has been contested. Here we report faster OR versus SR processing in Basque, an ergative, head-final language with pre-nominal relative clauses. A self paced reading task was used in Experiments 1 and 2, while ERPs were recorded in Experiment 3. We used relative clauses that were ambiguous between an object or subject gap interpretation and disambiguated later in the sentence. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that SR took longer to read than OR in the critical disambiguating region. In addition, Experiment 3 showed that SR produced larger amplitudes than OR in the P600 window immediately after reading the critical disambiguating word. Our results suggest that SR are not universally easier to process. They cast doubts on universal hypotheses and suggest that processing complexity may depend on language-specific aspects of grammar.

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A recently accepted paper in Behavior Research Methods

2009-07-16T19:47:00.002+01:00

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Joana Cholin, Jose Corral, Manuel Perea & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: SYLLABARIUM: An online application for deriving complete statistics for Basque and Spanish orthographic syllables.

Abstract: The present article introduces SYLLABARIUM, a new web tool addressing linguists, psycholinguists, and cognitive scientists who work on Spanish and/or Basque and are interested in retrieving information about several syllable-related parameters. This new online syllabic database allows the user to generate complete lists of Spanish and Basque syllables with information about the syllable frequency. Among other measures, for a given orthographic syllable SYLLABARIUM provides its number of occurrences (i.e., the type frequency), the summed lexical frequency of the words that contain this syllable (i.e., the token frequency), and the positional distribution of type and token frequencies. The cross-language feature of SYLLABARIUM is of special interest for researchers aiming to explore the influence of the syllable in bilingualism. The web tool is available at http://www.bcbl.eu/syllabarium

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A recently accepted paper in Psychophysiology

2009-06-15T00:01:00.003+01:00

Authors: Oliver Müller, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Orthographic and Associative Neighborhood Density Effects: What is Shared, What is Different?

Abstract: Words with many orthographic neighbors elicit a larger N400 than words with few orthographic neighbors. This has been interpreted as stronger overall semantic activation due to orthographic neighbors activating their semantic representations. To investigate this claim, we manipulated the number of associates of words (NoA), a variable directly affecting overall semantic activation, and compared this to the ERP effect of the number of orthographic neighbors (N) in a lexical decision task. Words with high NoA and with high N produced a very similar increase of the N400. In addition, a higher N increased the amplitude of the Late Positive Complex. The common N400 effect suggests that N affects semantic activation, like NoA does. The late positive effect specific to N could occur because words with few orthographic neighbors initially elicit little activity in the orthographic system, thereby resembling nonwords, which leads to distinct processing.

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A recently accepted paper in Neuropsychology

2009-05-16T18:44:00.001+01:00

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Alejandro Marín & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Associative and orthographic neighborhood density effects in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract: A group of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and a group of healthy elderly controls were tested with a lexical decision task that included words with dense or sparse orthographic and associative neighborhoods, to investigate whether there is automatic orthographic and semantic activation of related representations in these populations, similar to that found with younger samples. While some studies support the idea of deteriorated connections in semantic networks in Alzheimer’s disease, other studies propose that the automatic spread of activation at lexico-semantic levels remains intact and that intergroup differences are a consequence of impaired retrieval or attentional deficits. In this study, participants responded to words with dense orthographic and associative neighborhoods faster than to words with sparse neighborhoods, providing evidence in favor of a preserved automatic spread of activation through intact orthographic and semantic representations. Furthermore, no differences were found between the two groups regarding the magnitude of the effects, even though control participants responded significantly faster than patients.

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A recently accepted paper in QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

2009-03-20T19:29:00.002Z

Authors: Manuel Perea, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Alexander Pollatsek & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Does the brain regularize digits and letters to the same extent?

Abstract: The cognitive system does not just act as a mirror from the sensory input; instead, it tends to normalize this information. Given that letter processing seems to be much more specialized than digit processing in the cortex, we examined whether the regularization process occurs differently from digits to letters than from letters to digits: We employed a masked priming same/different experiment (e.g., probe: VESZED, prime, V35Z3D, and target VESZED). When embedded in letter strings, digits that resemble letters (e.g., 3 and 5 in V35Z3D-VESZED) tend to be encoded in a letter-like manner, whereas when embedded in digit strings, letters that resemble digits (e.g., E and S in 9ES7E2-935732) tend not to be encoded in a digit-like manner..

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A recently accepted paper in BEHAVIOR RESEARCH METHODS

2009-02-24T19:49:00.002Z

Authors: Maria Dimitropoulou, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Panagiotis Blitsas & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: A standardized set of 260 pictures for Modern Greek: Norms for name agreement, age of acquisition and visual complexity.

Abstract: The appropriate selection of both pictorial and linguistic experimental stimuli requires a previous language-specific standardization process of the materials across different variables. Considering that such normative data have not yet been collected for Modern Greek, in this study normative data for the color version of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set (Rossion & Pourtois, 2004) were collected from 330 native Greek adults. Participants named the pictures (providing name agreement ratings) and rated them for visual complexity and age of acquisition. The obtained measures represent a useful tool for further research on Greek language processing and constitute the first picture normative study for this language.

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A recently accepted paper in EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

2009-02-04T10:26:00.001Z

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Manuel Perea & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Masked translation priming effects with highly proficient simultaneous bilinguals.

Abstract: One essential issue for models of bilingual memory organization is to what degree the representation from one of the languages is shared with the other language. In the present paper, we examine whether there is a symmetrical translation priming effect with highly proficient, simultaneous bilinguals. We conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment with cognate and non-cognate translation equivalents. Results showed a significant masked translation priming effect for both cognates and noncognates, with a greater priming effect for cognates. Furthermore, the magnitude of the translation priming was similar in the two directions. Thus, highly fluent bilinguals do develop symmetrical between-language links, as predicted by the Revised Hierarchical Model and the BIA+ model. We examine the implications of these results for models of bilingual memory.

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A recently accepted paper in CEREBRAL CORTEX

2009-01-31T23:53:00.003Z

Authors: Manuel Carreiras, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia & Nicola Molinaro.

Title: Consonants and vowels contribute differently to visual word recognition: ERPs of relative position priming.

Abstract: This paper shows that the nature of letters –consonant vs. vowel– modulates the process of letter position assignment during visual word recognition. We recorded Event Related Potentials (ERPs) while participants read words in a masked priming semantic categorization task. Half of the words included a vowel as initial, third and fifth letters (e.g., acero [steel]). The other half included a consonant as initial, third and fifth (e.g., farol, [lantern]). Targets could be preceded 1) by the initial, third and fifth letters (relative position; e.g., aeo - acero and frl - farol), 2) by three consonants or vowels that did not appear in the target word (control; e.g., iui - acero and tsb - farol), or 3) by the same words (identity: acero-acero, farol-farol). The results showed modulation in two time windows (175-250 and 350-450 ms). Relative position primes composed of consonants produced similar effects to the identity condition. These two differed from the unrelated control condition, which showed a larger negativity. In contrast, relative position primes composed of vowels produced similar effects to the unrelated control condition and these two showed larger negativities as compared to the identity condition. This finding has important consequences for cracking the orthographic code and developing computational models of visual word recognition.

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A recently accepted paper in VISUAL COGNITION

2009-01-13T23:25:00.002Z

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Manuel Perea & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Eye movements when reading words with $YMβOL$ and NUM83R5: There is a cost.

Abstract: Recent evidence from masked priming experiments has revealed that readers regularize letter-like symbols and letter-like numbers into their corresponding base letters with minimal processing cost. However, one open question is whether the same pattern occurs when these items are presented during normal silent reading. In the present study, we respond to this question in an eye-movement experiment that included sentences with words that had symbols and numbers as letters, as in “YESTERDAY I SAW THE SECRE74RY WORKING VERY HARD”. Results revealed that there is a greater reading cost associated with letter-by-number replacements than with letter-by-symbol replacements, especially when the replaced letters occur at the beginning of the word. We examine the implications of these findings for models of visual word recognition and reading.

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A recently accepted manuscript in QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

2008-12-16T16:32:00.002Z

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Manuel Perea & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: There is no clam with coats in the calm coast: Delimiting the transposed-letter priming effect.

Abstract: In this article, we explore the transposed-letter priming effect (e.g., jugde-JUDGE vs. jupte-JUDGE), a phenomenon that taps into some key issues on how the brain encodes letter positions and has favored the creation of new input coding schemes. However, almost all the empirical evidence from transposed-letter priming experiments comes from nonword primes (e.g., jugde-JUDGE). Indeed, previous evidence when using word-word pairs (e.g., causal-CASUAL) is not conclusive. Here, we conducted five masked priming lexical decision experiments that examined the relationship between pairs of real words that differed only in the transposition of two of their letters (e.g., CASUAL vs. CAUSAL). Results showed that, unlike transposed-letter nonwords, transposed-letter words do not seem to affect the identification time of their transposed-letter mates. Thus, prime lexicality is a key factor that modulates the magnitude of transposed-letter priming effects. These results are interpreted under the assumption of the existence of lateral inhibition processes occurring within the lexical level –which cancels out any orthographic facilitation due to the overlapping letters. We examine the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition.

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A recently accepted manuscript in BRAIN RESEARCH

2008-12-10T19:57:00.002Z

Authors: Marta Vergara, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Itziar Laka & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: ERP Correlates of Inhibitory and Facilitative Effects of Constituent Frequency in Compound Word Reading.

Abstract: In the process of reading compound words, those with high-frequency second constituents are recognized faster than the ones with low-frequency second constituents. However, the role of the first constituent still remains unclear. In the present study, the time course of the frequency effects for both constituents was assessed using Basque compound words embedded in sentences while electrophysiological measures (ERPs) were recorded (Basque is a language with a high frequency of compound words, both right and left-headed). Subjects responded to comprehension questions that were not focused on the compound words. The results revealed that high-frequency first constituents elicited larger negativities starting very early (100-300 ms time window), while low-frequency second constituents elicited larger N400 amplitudes than high-frequency second constituents. Following an activation-verification framework, we argue that the early negativity difference reflects candidate triggering, whereas the N400 difference for the second constituent reflects the cost of its selection and integration for the whole-word meaning to be accessed.

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A recently accepted manuscript in NEUROREPORT

2008-12-01T10:35:00.013Z

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Nicola Molinaro, Itziar Laka, Adelina Estévez & Manuel Carreiras.

Title: N250 effects for letter transpositions depend on lexicality: Casual or causal?

Abstract: We examined the electrophysiological correlates of one of the most influential orthographic effects: The transposed-letter masked priming effect. Transposed-letter nonword-word pairs were included (jugde-judge), as well as transposed-letter word-word pairs (casual-causal) to investigate the influence of prime’s lexicality in the transposed letter effect. The results showed that when compared against the substituted-letter control conditions (jugde-judge vs. jupte-judge), transposed-letter primes produced a lower negativity in the N250 component. In contrast, no differences were obtained between the two word-word priming conditions (casual-causal vs. carnal-causal). The influence of lexicality in the transposed-letter effect is discussed according to models of visual word recognition and previous evidence from ERPs.

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A recently accepted manuscript in COGNITION

2008-11-20T22:35:00.004Z

Authors: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Alberto Avilés, Olivia Afonso, Christoph Scheepers and Manuel Carreiras.

Title: Qualitative differences in the representation of abstract versus concrete words: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm.

Abstract: In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the Qualitatively Different Representational framework that supports the view of different organizational principles for concrete and abstract words in semantic memory. Our results confirm the assumption of a primary organizational principle based on association for abstract words, different from the semantic similarity principle proposed for concrete words, and provide the first piece of evidence in support of this view obtained from healthy participants. The results shed light on the representational structure of abstract and concrete concepts.

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