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This study analyzed the electrophysiological correlates of language switching in second language learners. Participants were native Spanish speakers classified in two groups according to English proficiency (high and low). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while they read English sentences, half of which contained an adjective in Spanish in the middle of the sentence. The ERP results show the time-course of language switch processing for both groups: an initial detection of the switch driven by language-specific orthography (left-occipital N250) followed by costs at the level of the lexico-semantic system (N400), and finally a late updating or reanalysis process (LPC). In the high proficiency group, effects in the N400 time window extended to left anterior electrodes and were followed by larger LPC amplitudes at posterior sites. These differences suggest that proficiency modulates the different processes triggered by language switches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Studies of word production in patients with Alzheimer''s disease have identified the age of acquisition of words as an important predictor of retention or loss, with early acquired words remaining accessible for longer than later acquired words. If, as proposed by current theories, effects of age of acquisition reflect the involvement of semantic representations in task performance, then some aspects of word recognition in patients with Alzheimer''s disease should also be better for early than later acquired words. We employed a version of the lexical decision task which we term the lexical selection task. This required participants to indicate which of four items on a page was a real word (the three ‘foils’ being orthographically plausible nonwords). Twenty-two patients with probable Alzheimer''s disease were compared with an equal number of matched controls. The controls made few errors on the test, demonstrating that the controls were cognitively intact, and that the words were familiar to participants of their age and level of education. The Alzheimer patients were impaired overall, and recognized fewer late than early acquired words correctly. Performance of the Alzheimer patients on the lexical selection task correlated significantly with their scores on the mini mental state examination. Word recognition becomes impaired as Alzheimer''s disease progresses, at which point effects of age of acquisition can be observed on the accuracy of performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The role of word frequency in lexical access during the production of homophones remains unresolved. In the current study, we address whether specific-word (the frequency of occurrence of the word “nun”) or homophone frequency (the summed frequency of words with the pronunciation /nΛn/) determines the production latencies of homophones. In Experiments 1a, 2a, and 3a, participants named pictures of high-frequency (e.g., “banco”-a bank: financial institution) and low-frequency (e.g., “banco”-park bench) Spanish (Experiments 1a and 2a) or French (Experiment 3a) homophones and control pictures of nonhomophone words matched in frequency with each of the two uses of the homophones. The naming latencies for low-frequency homophones were longer than those for high-frequency homophones. Furthermore, the naming latencies for homophones were indistinguishable from those for nonhomophone controls matched in specific-word frequency. In Experiments 1b, 2b, and 3b, the participants performed either object decision or picture-word matching tasks with the stimuli used in the corresponding Experiments 1a, 2a, and 3a. There were no reliable differences between high- and low-frequency homophones. The findings support the hypothesis that specific-word and not homophone frequency determines lexical access in speech production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objective: The main goal of the present study was to dissociate the effects on reading of frequency, age of acquisition (AoA) and imageability using the evoked response potential paradigm. Method: Twenty participants read words from three experimental conditions: high and low frequency, late and early age of acquisition and high and low imageability. Results: High frequency words produced more positive mean amplitude than low frequency words in the 175–360ms post-stimulus onset time window and late AoA produced more negative amplitudes than early AoA in the 400–610ms window. Imageability did not produce any effect in any time window tested. Brain electromagnetic tomography showed the most activated cortical areas for each category of stimuli. Conclusions: The lexical frequency of words seems to affect an early phase in the recognition process, perhaps at the level of the orthographic input lexicon, while AoA was observed at a later stage, indicating that this variable influence processing at a semantic level or at the links between semantics and phonology. Significance: EEG permits the researcher to investigate the time course, and approximate location in the brain, of psycholinguistic variables. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Age of acquisition is one of the most important variables in picture naming. For this reason, a large number of findings concerning age-of-acquisition data have been published in recent years in a number of different languages. In this article, objective age-of-acquisition data in Spanish for 328 pictures were collected from a pool of 760 children, half of whom were boys and the other half girls. A total of 246 pictures were selected from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set, and 82 were new pictures. Like the results of other studies, we found that objective age of acquisition correlates less than rated age of acquisition with familiarity and frequency, which indicates that the objective measure is less contaminated by other variables than are rated estimates. A very high correlation was obtained between the norms from this study and those published in English, French, Icelandic, and Italian. These norms will be very useful to Spanish psycholinguists and clinicians. Related materials may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main determinants of lexical access in speech are considered to be a word's age of acquisition (AoA) and its frequency of occurrence in a speaker's experience. It is unclear whether and how these variables interact, although they are commonly observed to be correlated, for the few studies that ad- dress the issue have reported inconsistent findings. An influential view of AoA in lexical processing (Ellis & Lambon Ralph, 2000) predicts stronger frequency effects for items acquired later in life than for those acquired at an early age. Five experiments were designed to investigate the possible interaction of AoA and frequency effects in speech. We found that the interaction between word frequency and AoA was not robust and that, contrary to expectation, the effect of word frequency was greater for words acquired earlier in life than for those acquired later. The implications of our findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous studies involving lexical access in anomic patients had employed regression analyses to separate the lexical variables. But it is now known that when the relevant variables are as closely related as frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and familiarity, regression analysis loses efficacy. The aim of the present paper was to investigate which of these variables determines lexical access in anomic patients. In order to disentangle the effects of frequency from those of AoA, we conducted two picture-naming studies. In the first study, we used a semifactorial design in which we manipulated one variable and matched the other. In the second, we used an orthogonal factorial design in which the two variables were crossed to detect any interaction between them. The participants were pure anomic patients whose disorders affected lexical access exclusively; they had neither semantic nor phonological deficits. The statistical analyses show a clear effect of AoA, no effect of frequency, and no interaction between the two variables. The results of this study indicate that AoA is the main determinant of lexical access in anomic patients, and this must be taken into account in constructing materials for the assessment and rehabilitation of these patients. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present article provides Spanish norms for name agreement, printed word frequency, word compound frequency, familiarity, imageability, visual complexity, age of acquisition, and word length (measured by syllables and phonemes) for 100 line drawings of actions taken from Druks and Masterson (2000). In addition, through a naming-time experiment carried out with a group of 54 Spanish students in a pool of 63 of these line drawings, we determined the best predictors of naming actions. In the multiple regression analysis, age of acquisition and name agreement emerged as the most important determinants of action-naming reaction time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correct stress assignment is a requirement for fluent reading in alphabetic languages. This study focuses on two nonlexical mechanisms at the core of stress assignment. In particular, the use of a default stress pattern (e.g., penultimate stress) and the Spanish stress mark. In Experiment 1, participants read aloud words and pseudowords with different stress types (on the antepenultimate or the penultimate syllable), and with or without a stress mark. Results showed longer reaction times (RTs) for words and pseudowords with antepenultimate stress. However, as words with antepenultimate stress always have a stress mark, it could be argued that stress type differences could be due to the presence of the stress mark. In Experiment 2, using a priming procedure participants read aloud words and pseudowords in pure versus mixed stress blocks. Again, words and pseudowords with antepenultimate stress were read slower (longer RTs), suggesting that previous differences were due to stress mark rather than stress type. These results indicate that processing stress marks is cognitively demanding when reading in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a study of the factors that affect reading in Spanish, a language with a transparent orthography. Our focus was on the influence of lexical semantic knowledge in phonological coding. This effect would be predicted to be minimal in Spanish, according to some accounts of semantic effects in reading. We asked 25 healthy adults to name 2,764 mono- and multisyllabic words. As is typical for psycholinguistics, variables capturing critical word attributes were highly intercorrelated. Therefore, we used principal components analysis (PCA) to derive orthogonalized predictors from raw variables. The PCA distinguished components relating to (1) word frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and familiarity; (2) word AoA, imageability, and familiarity; (3) word length and orthographic neighborhood size; and (4) bigram type and token frequency. Linear mixed-effects analyses indicated significant effects on reading due to each PCA component. Our observations confirm that oral reading in Spanish proceeds through spelling-sound mappings involving lexical and sublexical units. Importantly, our observations distinguish between the effect of lexical frequency (the impact of the component relating to frequency, AoA, and familiarity) and the effect of semantic knowledge (the impact of the component relating to AoA, imageability, and familiarity). Semantic knowledge influences word naming even when all the words being read have regular spelling-sound mappings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to explore the role of the main psycholinguistic variables on visual word recognition, several mega-studies have been conducted in English in recent years. Nevertheless, because the effects of these variables depend on the regularity of the orthographic system, studies must also be done in other languages with different characteristics. The goal of this work was to conduct a lexical decision study in Spanish, a language with a shallow orthography and a high number of words. The influence of psycholinguistic variables on latencies corresponding to 2,765 words was assessed by means of linear mixed-effects modeling. The results show that some variables, such as frequency or age of acquisition, have significant effects on reaction times regardless of the type of words used. Other variables, such as orthographic neighborhood or imageability, were significant only in specific groups of words. Our results highlight the importance of taking into account the peculiarities of each spelling system in the development of reading models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]