Esta dissertação teve como objetivo investigar as relações entre reconhecimento de palavras e compreensão de leitura textual e o processamento léxico. A dissertação é constituída de dois estudos. No primeiro estudo, são revisados modelos de leitura de palavras e de texto com o objetivo de examinar o papel do processamento léxico-semântico no reconhecimento visual de palavras e na compreensão de leitura textual. O paradigma de priming semântico é apresentado como uma ferramenta para a investigação da relação entre processamento léxico-semântico e ambos os componentes de leitura examinados. São apresentados os principais modelos teóricos de priming semântico, juntamente com uma revisão dos estudos empíricos que relacionam priming semântico e leitura, e algumas conclusões e perspectivas de investigação são apresentadas. No segundo estudo, foram investigadas empiricamente as relações entre processamento léxico-semântico e leitura (reconhecimento visual de palavras e compreensão de leitura textual) em uma amostra de 68 crianças, de 7 a 12 anos, de escolas particulares de Porto Alegre. O processamento léxico-semântico foi avaliado através de uma tarefa de decisão lexical no paradigma de priming semântico, enquanto as habilidades de leitura foram medidas por uma tarefa de leitura de palavras/pseudopalavras isoladas e uma tarefa de compreensão de leitura textual (resposta a questões e reconto de história). Foram investigadas correlações entre efeitos de priming semântico e desempenho em tarefas de leitura de palavras e compreensão de leitura textual e se o priming semântico prediz o desempenho dos participantes nas tarefas de leitura. Os resultados mostraram que o priming semântico se correlaciona com ambas as medidas de leitura, e que o reconhecimento de palavras medeia parcialmente a relação entre processamento léxico-semântico e compreensão de leitura textual. / The aim of this dissertation was to investigate the relationships between word recognition and reading comprehension with lexical-semantic processing. The dissertation is composed of two studies. In the first study, models of word reading and reading comprehension are reviewed in order to examine the role of lexical-semantic processing in visual word recognition and in reading comprehension. The semantic priming paradigm is presented as an instrument for the investigation of relationships between lexical-semantic processing and the components of reading examined. The main theoretical models of semantic priming are presented and a review of studies which relate semantic priming and reading is conducted, and some conclusions and perspectives for investigation are presented. In the second study, relations between lexical-semantic processing and reading (visual word recognition and reading comprehension) were investigated empirically in a sample of 68 children, aged seven to twelve years, from private schools in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Lexical-semantic processing was evaluated by a lexical decision task in the semantic priming paradigm and reading abilities were assessed with a word/nonword reading task and a reading comprehension task (questionnaire and story retelling). Correlations between semantic priming effects and word reading and reading comprehension were investigated, as well as if semantic priming effects predict performance on the reading task. Results showed that semantic priming correlates with both groups of reading measures, and that word reading partially mediates the relation between lexical-semantic processing and reading comprehension.

Esta dissertação teve como objetivo investigar as relações entre reconhecimento de palavras e compreensão de leitura textual e o processamento léxico. A dissertação é constituída de dois estudos. No primeiro estudo, são revisados modelos de leitura de palavras e de texto com o objetivo de examinar o papel do processamento léxico-semântico no reconhecimento visual de palavras e na compreensão de leitura textual. O paradigma de priming semântico é apresentado como uma ferramenta para a investigação da relação entre processamento léxico-semântico e ambos os componentes de leitura examinados. São apresentados os principais modelos teóricos de priming semântico, juntamente com uma revisão dos estudos empíricos que relacionam priming semântico e leitura, e algumas conclusões e perspectivas de investigação são apresentadas. No segundo estudo, foram investigadas empiricamente as relações entre processamento léxico-semântico e leitura (reconhecimento visual de palavras e compreensão de leitura textual) em uma amostra de 68 crianças, de 7 a 12 anos, de escolas particulares de Porto Alegre. O processamento léxico-semântico foi avaliado através de uma tarefa de decisão lexical no paradigma de priming semântico, enquanto as habilidades de leitura foram medidas por uma tarefa de leitura de palavras/pseudopalavras isoladas e uma tarefa de compreensão de leitura textual (resposta a questões e reconto de história). Foram investigadas correlações entre efeitos de priming semântico e desempenho em tarefas de leitura de palavras e compreensão de leitura textual e se o priming semântico prediz o desempenho dos participantes nas tarefas de leitura. Os resultados mostraram que o priming semântico se correlaciona com ambas as medidas de leitura, e que o reconhecimento de palavras medeia parcialmente a relação entre processamento léxico-semântico e compreensão de leitura textual. / The aim of this dissertation was to investigate the relationships between word recognition and reading comprehension with lexical-semantic processing. The dissertation is composed of two studies. In the first study, models of word reading and reading comprehension are reviewed in order to examine the role of lexical-semantic processing in visual word recognition and in reading comprehension. The semantic priming paradigm is presented as an instrument for the investigation of relationships between lexical-semantic processing and the components of reading examined. The main theoretical models of semantic priming are presented and a review of studies which relate semantic priming and reading is conducted, and some conclusions and perspectives for investigation are presented. In the second study, relations between lexical-semantic processing and reading (visual word recognition and reading comprehension) were investigated empirically in a sample of 68 children, aged seven to twelve years, from private schools in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Lexical-semantic processing was evaluated by a lexical decision task in the semantic priming paradigm and reading abilities were assessed with a word/nonword reading task and a reading comprehension task (questionnaire and story retelling). Correlations between semantic priming effects and word reading and reading comprehension were investigated, as well as if semantic priming effects predict performance on the reading task. Results showed that semantic priming correlates with both groups of reading measures, and that word reading partially mediates the relation between lexical-semantic processing and reading comprehension.

Comment les mots sont-ils reconnus? Comment avons-nous accès à la signification des mots? Ces questions ont été explorées dans des études sur l'accès lexical et la reconnaissance des mots durant le demi-siècle dernier dans les domaines de la psycho-, neuro- et de la linguistique. Le traitement morphologique est un niveau essentiel de traitement pour l'extraction d'information lors de la reconnaissance de mots. A un extrême, les modèles de pleine-entrée proposent le stockage du mot entier dans la mémoire et un traitement morphologique post-lexical paradigmatiques; à l'autre extrême, les modèles décompositionnels proposent une décomposition pré-lexicale et une activation morphologique basée sur des règles; entre les deux, les modèles à double-mécanismes postulent deux voies pour la reconnaissance des mots, une route associative avec les mots entiers et une route combinatoire basée sur des règles. Dans la présente thèse, le traitement morphologique des verbes fléchis en français a été étudié en modalité visuelle dans cinq études. L'étude 1 a recherché à mettre à jour l'organisation du lexique mental en utilisant les effets de fréquences de surface et les effets de fréquences cumulée; l'étude 2 a exploré l'impact des différents processus de formation du radical verbal; l'étude 3 a étudié les opérations morphologiques au travers des suffixes flexionnels; l'étude 4 a testé le traitement morphologique verbal pour des locuteurs de français comme L2; et l'étude 5 a exploré les violations morphologiques verbales via des mesures électro-encéphalographiques. Globalement les résultats suggèrent que tous les verbes français fléchis sont traités par un mécanisme unique avec décomposition morphologique pré-lexicale pour l'accès lexical et la reconnaissance des mots. Il est proposé un traitement différent pour les morphèmes lexicaux et fonctionnels. Les mots sont décomposés en morphèmes atomiques, les représentations morphologiques sont activées dans le lexique mental, et les constituants de mots sont recombinés pour la vérification de mot / How words are recognized? How do we process word meaning? These questions have been pursued in lexical access and word recognition studies in the last half century of research in psycho-, neuro-, and linguistics. Morphological processing is an essential level of processing for information extraction during word recognition. In one extreme, full-entry models propose whole word storage in memory and post-lexical morphological processing based on paradigms; in the other extreme, decompositional models posit pre-lexical decomposition and morphemic activation based on rules; between then, dual-mechanism models consider two routes for word recognition, a whole-word associative route and a combinatorial rule-based route. In the present thesis, it was investigated the morphological processing of French inflected verbs in visual modality in five studies. Study 1 researched the mental lexicon organization in function of surface and cumulative frequencies; Study 2 explored different stem formation processes; Study 3 investigated morphological operations in the inflectional suffixes; Study 4 tested the verbal morphological processing in L2 French speakers; and Study 5 tested verbal violations coupled with electroencephalography acquisition. The results suggest that all inflected French verbs are processed by a single-mechanism model with pre-lexical morphological decomposition for lexical activation and word recognition. It is proposed different processing for the lexical and functional morphemes. Words are decomposed in atomic morphemes, morphemic representations are activated in the mental lexicon, and word constituents are recombined for word verification

This project addresses the problems some second grade students face when reading and writing due to decoding and encoding confusions and difficulties.

The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent bi-modal input improves the word segmentation ability of L2 learners of Japanese. Accurately identifying words in continuous speech is a fundamental process for comprehending the overall message, but studies show that second language (L2) learners often find this task difficult, even when all individual words are familiar to them (e.g. Field, 2003; Goh, 2000). This is where the combination of written and audio input (bi-modal input), like when providing captions in the target language, could be helpful because it can provide orthographical image of the sound they hear, which in turn makes the input more intelligible (Charles & Trenkic, 2015). This study was implemented through a single-case design (SCD), where 12 third-year Japanese learners at a public university in the Midwestern United States underwent a semester-long pre-post design experiment. Participants watched a series of Japanese documentary with sound and captions (bi-modal input) throughout the semester. Before and after viewing each video, participants took Elicited Imitation Tasks (EIT) as the pre-post-tests, as well as at the beginning and at the end of the semester. The result showed that most participants improved their EIT scores throughout the semester, even to utterances from videos and speakers to which they had not been exposed. This study provided evidence that bi-modal input has the potential to help learners’ internal phonological representations of lexical items to become more stable and sophisticated, which would in turn contribute to L2 Japanese learners’ speech processing efficiency.

No description available.

Main purpose of the thesis is to study the processes and methods of isolated words recognition. In the theoretical part a basic principals are explained. The practical part is about the program creating using these principles in practice. For isolated words recognition Hidden Markov Models (HMM) are used, for obtaining decision symptoms cepstral analysis is chosen.

Data from earlier studies that presented 70 words at 24 to 0 dB signal-to-babble (S/B) ratios indicated that most young listeners with normal hearing required 0 to 6 dB S/B ratios to attain 50% correct word recognition. Older listeners with hearing loss often required a >12 dB S/B ratio to attain 50% correct word recognition. In our study, we converted the Words in Noise test from one 70-word list into two 35-word lists for quicker administration by clinicians. Using baseline data from previous studies, we used two strategies to randomize the 35-word lists: based on recognition performance at each S/B ratio and based on recognition performance only. With the first randomization strategy, the 50% correct word-recognition points on the two lists differed by 0.5 dB for 72 listeners with hearing loss. With the second randomization strategy, 48 listeners with hearing loss performed identically on the two lists.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第20664号 / 医博第4274号 / 新制||医||1024(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 髙橋 良輔, 教授 伊佐 正, 教授 井上 治久 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Spoken language is produced with a great deal of variability with which listeners must be able to cope. One source of variation is coarticulation, which is due to articulatory planning and transitions between segments. Recently, the temporal features of coarticulation were investigated during a picture/spoken-word matching task by using spliced stimuli carrying either congruent or incongruent subphonemic cues at the CV juncture (Archibald & Joanisse, 2011). ERPs were recorded with attention paid to the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) (Connolly & Phillips, 1994; Newman & Connolly, 2004) – a prelexical response sensitive to violations of phonological expectations. Results found that the PMN varied in response to coarticulation violations and concluded that phonetic features in spoken words influence prelexical processing during word recognition. Using a written-/spoken-word paradigm, Arbour, 2012 controlled phonological shape by using onsets that were either fricatives or stops, hypothesizing that coarticulatory information would be differentially processed due to their temporal differences. Findings supported the PMN’s sensitivity to coarticulation but also showed that temporal and physical differences between onsets modulated the effect. These results raise the question of whether acoustic distance between vowels will modulate prelexical processing of speech as reflected by the PMN amplitude: the focus of the current study. Words were organized into minimal sets such that all onset/coda combinations appeared with each vowel provided that English words resulted. Vowels were one of /i, u, æ, ɑ/, maximizing acoustic distance (height and backness). Data from 20 subjects indicate that the PMN is sensitive to the degree of difference between the original and post-splice vowels. When the number of distinctive features changing is greater, the result is an earlier, more robust PMN. This suggests that the rate of speech recognition is not static but dynamic, and is dependent on likeness of subphonemic features. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)