Rethinking orthographic neighbor in Chinese two-character word recognition: Insights from a megastudy.

The influence of orthographic neighbors on visual word recognition is well established in alphabetic scripts. To determine the universality of this effect across writing systems, researchers have been keen on exploring its presence and nature in Chinese word recognition. Given that Chinese is logographic, it necessitates a different definition for orthographic neighbors from the ones used in alphabetic scripts. One popular approach is to consider words that share characters as orthographic neighbors. Adopting this definition, a facilitative effect has been observed for characters that can create more words. However, as characters are also morphemes in Chinese, the facilitation found might actually come from a larger morphological family size. This possibility was tested in the present study by analyzing data from the Chinese Lexicon Project (CLP; Tse et al., Behavior Research Methods, 49, 1503-1519, 2017, Behavior Research Methods, 49, 1503-1519, 2022), a megastudy of two-character word recognition in traditional Chinese. If the effects of character-sharing are indeed morphological in nature, the facilitation should be smaller for ambiguous characters because the words formed are distributed over several morphological families. The results of the analyses were consistent with this hypothesis, revealing interactions between the number of words formed by a character and the number of meanings of the character. The implications of these findings were discussed in the context of definitions of orthographic neighbors and theories of word recognition in Chinese.

Comparing word recognition in simplified and traditional Chinese: A megastudy approach.

Although it is well established that the visual complexity of a written word can influence processing, it is far less clear from a cross-script perspective, whether the overall visual complexity of the entire written lexicon also affects word recognition. This question can be answered with the data in megastudy of lexical decision in Chinese (MELD-CH), which was developed with over 800 participants responding to 12,587 simplified and traditional Chinese words. The results showed that lexical decision was slower but more accurate in simplified Chinese, which has about 22.5% less strokes, than traditional Chinese. This pattern could not be explained by a speed-accuracy trade-off. Moderate correlations were found in response times and error rates between the two scripts, indicating considerable overlap in processing despite the script difference. In addition, (generalised) linear mixed-effects modelling was used to examine whether the simplified and traditional Chinese groups differed in sensitivity towards linguistic variables. The results showed that the effects of word frequency, word length, and number of strokes were stronger in recognising simplified Chinese words, whereas the effects of number of words formed and number of meanings of the constituent characters were stronger in traditional Chinese. These results suggested that the visual-perceptual processing demands of simplified Chinese might force readers to focus more on local properties of the words, making them less sensitive to global properties that are defined over the entire lexicon. Finally, limitations and alternative explanations of the results were discussed.

Tonal and syllabic encoding in overt Cantonese Chinese speech production: An ERP study.

This study was conducted to investigate how syllables and lexical tones are processed in Cantonese speech production using the picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore an accompanying auditory word distractor. The target and distractor either shared the same word-initial syllable with the same tone (Tonal-Syllable related), the same word-initial syllable without the same tone (Atonal-Syllable related), the same tone only (Tone alone related), or were phonologically unrelated. Participants' naming responses were faster, relative to an unrelated control, when the target and distractor shared the same tonal- or atonal-syllable but null effect was found in the Tone alone related condition. The mean ERP amplitudes (per each 100-ms time window) were subjected to stimulus-locked (i.e., time-locked to stimulus onset) and response-locked (i.e., time-locked to response onset) analyses. Significant differences between related and unrelated ERP waves were similarly observed in both Tonal-Syllable related and Atonal-Syllable related conditions in the time window of 400-500 ms post-stimulus. However, distinct ERP effects were observed in these two phonological conditions within the 500-ms pre-response period. In addition, null effects were found in the Tone alone related condition in both stimulus-locked and response-locked analyses. These results suggest that in Cantonese spoken word production, the atonal syllable of the target is retrieved first and then associated with the target lexical tone, consistent with the view that tone has an important role to play at a late stage of phonological encoding in tonal language production.

Cross-cultural adaptation of the Brazilian version of the Speech-Specific Reinvestment Scale - SSRS. / Equivalência cultural da versão brasileira do protocolo Speech-Specific Reinvestment Scale­ SSRS.

PURPOSE: To present the cross-cultural equivalence of the Brazilian version of the Specific Reinvestment Scale in Speech - SRRS through its cultural and linguistic adaptation. METHODS: After the SSRS was translated into Brazilian Portuguese, the back-translation was done and the items were compared. Discrepancies were modified by consensus of a committee of SLPs. The SSRS, named "Escala de Reinvestimento Específico na Fala - EREF", has 39 questions and six alternatives in the answer key: "strongly disagree", "disagree", "slightly disagree", "slightly agree", "agree" and "strongly agree". The mean score is computed by the sum of each subdimension. Negative items may not be included in the EREF scoring or need reversed coding process before using them. For cultural equivalence, the EREF was applied to a total of 74 professionals working in an activity involving communication with the public, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese as a first language, with an extra item in the answer key - "not applicable" - to identify issues that might not have been understood or were not appropriate for the target population and Brazilian culture. RESULTS: The scale was initially applied to 56 participants, thirteen of whom found it difficult to complete 27 questions. After adaptation of those sentences, the modified EREF was applied to 13 more participants and no further cultural and / or conceptual barriers were found. CONCLUSION: Cultural equivalence between the SSRS and its translated version to Brazilian Portuguese - EREF was verified. The next steps for the EREF validation for Brazilian Portuguese will be carried out.

OBJETIVO: Realizar a equivalência cultural da versão brasileira da escala SSRS, por meio de sua adaptação cultural e linguística. MÉTODO: Após tradução da SSRS para o português brasileiro e retro tradução para o inglês, os itens foram comparados com o instrumento original. As discrepâncias existentes foram modificadas por consenso por um comitê de fonoaudiólogos, resultando na Escala de Reinvestimento Específico na Fala ­ EREF. A EREF tem 39 questões e seis alternativas na chave de resposta: "discordo totalmente", "discordo", "discordo ligeiramente", "concordo ligeiramente", "concordo" e "concordo totalmente". A pontuação é a soma das pontuações médias de cada subdimensão da escala, sendo que os itens negativos não entram na contabilidade ou exigem pontuação reversa. Para a equivalência cultural, a EREF foi aplicada em um total de 74 profissionais em exercício de atividade envolvendo comunicação com público, falantes do português brasileiro como primeira língua, com acréscimo da opção "não aplicável" na chave de respostas, para identificação de questões não compreendidas ou não apropriadas para a população alvo e cultura brasileira. RESULTADOS: A escala foi inicialmente aplicada em 56 participantes. Treze encontraram dificuldade para o preenchimento de 27 questões. Após a adaptação da tradução das sentenças não compreendidas ou consideradas inapropriadas, a EREF modificada foi aplicada em mais 13 respondentes e não foram encontradas barreiras culturais e/ou conceituais. CONCLUSÃO: Foi verificada equivalência cultural entre a SSRS e sua versão traduzida para o português brasileiro, a EREF. As próximas etapas para validação da EREF para o Português Brasileiro serão realizadas com a conclusão desta fase.

Equivalência cultural da versão brasileira do protocolo Speech-Specific Reinvestment Scale- SSRS / Cross-cultural adaptation of the Brazilian version of the Speech-Specific Reinvestment Scale - SSRS

RESUMO Objetivo Realizar a equivalência cultural da versão brasileira da escala SSRS, por meio de sua adaptação cultural e linguística. Método Após tradução da SSRS para o português brasileiro e retro tradução para o inglês, os itens foram comparados com o instrumento original. As discrepâncias existentes foram modificadas por consenso por um comitê de fonoaudiólogos, resultando na Escala de Reinvestimento Específico na Fala - EREF. A EREF tem 39 questões e seis alternativas na chave de resposta: "discordo totalmente", "discordo", "discordo ligeiramente", "concordo ligeiramente", "concordo" e "concordo totalmente". A pontuação é a soma das pontuações médias de cada subdimensão da escala, sendo que os itens negativos não entram na contabilidade ou exigem pontuação reversa. Para a equivalência cultural, a EREF foi aplicada em um total de 74 profissionais em exercício de atividade envolvendo comunicação com público, falantes do português brasileiro como primeira língua, com acréscimo da opção "não aplicável" na chave de respostas, para identificação de questões não compreendidas ou não apropriadas para a população alvo e cultura brasileira. Resultados A escala foi inicialmente aplicada em 56 participantes. Treze encontraram dificuldade para o preenchimento de 27 questões. Após a adaptação da tradução das sentenças não compreendidas ou consideradas inapropriadas, a EREF modificada foi aplicada em mais 13 respondentes e não foram encontradas barreiras culturais e/ou conceituais. Conclusão Foi verificada equivalência cultural entre a SSRS e sua versão traduzida para o português brasileiro, a EREF. As próximas etapas para validação da EREF para o Português Brasileiro serão realizadas com a conclusão desta fase.

ABSTRACT Purpose To present the cross-cultural equivalence of the Brazilian version of the Specific Reinvestment Scale in Speech - SRRS through its cultural and linguistic adaptation. Methods After the SSRS was translated into Brazilian Portuguese, the back-translation was done and the items were compared. Discrepancies were modified by consensus of a committee of SLPs. The SSRS, named "Escala de Reinvestimento Específico na Fala - EREF", has 39 questions and six alternatives in the answer key: "strongly disagree", "disagree", "slightly disagree", "slightly agree", "agree" and "strongly agree". The mean score is computed by the sum of each subdimension. Negative items may not be included in the EREF scoring or need reversed coding process before using them. For cultural equivalence, the EREF was applied to a total of 74 professionals working in an activity involving communication with the public, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese as a first language, with an extra item in the answer key - "not applicable" - to identify issues that might not have been understood or were not appropriate for the target population and Brazilian culture. Results The scale was initially applied to 56 participants, thirteen of whom found it difficult to complete 27 questions. After adaptation of those sentences, the modified EREF was applied to 13 more participants and no further cultural and / or conceptual barriers were found. Conclusion Cultural equivalence between the SSRS and its translated version to Brazilian Portuguese - EREF was verified. The next steps for the EREF validation for Brazilian Portuguese will be carried out.

Development of a Psychometric Measure of the Propensity to Consciously Control and Monitor Speech Production.

Purpose A speech-specific reinvestment scale (SSRS) is a psychometric measure of the propensity to consciously control and monitor speech production. This study develops and validates an SSRS as well as examines its relationship with speech performance with the moderating effects of trait social anxieties (i.e., social interaction anxiety, public speaking anxiety, and social phobia). Method Scale development involves the following stages: (a) initial item generation based on relevant literature, (b) item evaluation through cognitive interviews with 24 healthy respondents, (c) scale reliability and validity tests using cross-sectional survey data from 498 healthy respondents, and (d) test-retest reliability assessment using longitudinal survey data from 185 healthy respondents. Respondents' speech performance is quantified using speech examination scores. Hierarchical moderated regression analyses are conducted to examine the moderating effects of trait social anxieties. Results The validated SSRS comprises 35 items, which can be categorized into four subdimensions, namely, speech movement self-consciousness, public consciousness of speech content, speech manner, and speech movement. Results show that respondents with low trait social anxieties indicate a generally positive relationship between public consciousness of speech movement and speech performance, whereas respondents with high trait social anxieties exhibit a nonsignificant relationship. Conclusions SSRS offers a reliable and valid method for assessing the predisposition for conscious speech control and monitoring, which plays a role in speech performance and is moderated by an individual's level of trait social anxiety. SSRS is a potential assessment tool for speech-language pathologists to evaluate the impacts of conscious speech control and monitoring on individuals with speech impairment.

Behavioural evidence for segments as subordinate units in Chinese spoken word production: The form-preparation paradigm revisited.

It is widely acknowledged that phonemic segments are primary phonological units, processed serially, in spoken word production of Germanic languages. However, evidence for a behavioural effect of single-segment overlap on Chinese spoken word production is lacking. The current study adopted the form-preparation paradigm to investigate the effects of segment predictability and segment repetition separately, which were mixed in previous studies. Native Mandarin Chinese speakers named pictures in the following conditions: predictable, unpredictable, and no segment repetition. Different positions in words (i.e., the onset and the rhyme) were examined at the same time. Results revealed a facilitation effect of onset predictability masked by an inhibition tendency of onset repetition, indicating Chinese speakers' ability to prepare the predictable onset. In contrast, rhyme predictability showed a non-significant effect. This pattern of results did not change no matter whether the conditions of unpredictable onset repetition and unpredictable rhyme repetition were mixed in the same context (Experiment 1) or extracted from different blocked contexts (Experiment 2). The finding provides essential support to the claim that phonemic segments are functionally engaged in Chinese spoken word production, and thus adds original evidence to the universal aspect of spoken word production.

Effects of Error Experience on Learning to Lower Speech Nasalance Level.

Purpose This research aims to examine the effects of error experience when learning to speak with lowered nasalance level. Method A total of 45 typical speakers were instructed to learn to lower speech nasalance level in either an errorless (restricted possibility for committing errors) or an errorful (unrestricted possibility for committing errors) learning condition. The nasality level of the participants' speech was measured by a nasometer and quantified by nasalance scores (in percent). Errorless learners practiced producing speech with lowered nasalance level with a threshold nasalance score of 50% (the easiest target) at the beginning, which gradually decreased to a threshold of 10% (the most difficult target) at the end. The same set of threshold targets was presented to errorful learners, but in reverse order. Errors were defined by the proportion of speech, with a nasalance score exceeding the threshold. Retention and transfer tests were administered. Results Errorless learners displayed fewer errors and lower mean nasalance scores than errorful learners during the acquisition phase. Furthermore, errorless learners achieved lower mean nasalance scores than errorful learners in the retention and transfer tests. Conclusion These results suggest that errorless learning is more effective than errorful learning and that error experience has a detrimental effect on the acquisition of a novel speech motor task that requires minimization of the nasality level. Errorless learning may be a useful paradigm for the intervention and management of hypernasality in clinical settings where behavioral treatments are needed.

Syllable retrieval precedes sub-syllabic encoding in Cantonese spoken word production.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Cantonese spoken word production by using the picture-word interference task. Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name individually presented pictures aloud and ignore an auditory word distractor. The targets and distractors were either phonologically related (i.e., sharing two identical word-initial phonemes) or unrelated. In Experiment 1, the target syllables were all consonant-vowel (CV)-structured. The phonological distractor was either a CV syllable (i.e., Full Syllable Overlap) or a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) syllable (i.e., Sub-syllable Overlap). Relative to the unrelated control, Full Syllable Overlap distractors facilitated naming in all stimuli onset asynchronies (SOAs) (-175, 0, or +175 ms) whereas Sub-syllable Overlap distractors exhibited facilitation only at 0-ms and +175-ms SOAs. Experiment 2 adopted a similar design to examine the possible influence of syllabic structure similarity on the results of Experiment 1. The target syllables were all CVC-structured. The phonological distractor was either a CVC (i.e., Syllable-structure Consistent) or CV (i.e., Syllable-structure Inconsistent) syllable. Comparable priming was observed between the two distractor conditions across the three SOAs. These results indicated that an earlier priming effect was observed with full syllable overlap than sub-syllabic overlap when the degree of segmental overlap was held constant (Experiment 1). The earlier syllable priming observed in Experiment 1 could not be attributed to the effect of syllabic-structure (Experiment 2), thereby suggesting that the syllable unit is important in Cantonese and is retrieved earlier than sub-syllabic components during phonological encoding.

Time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Mandarin word production: Evidence from the picture-word interference paradigm.

The time course of phonological encoding in Mandarin monosyllabic word production was investigated by using the picture-word interference paradigm. Participants were asked to name pictures in Mandarin while visual distractor words were presented before, at, or after picture onset (i.e., stimulus-onset asynchrony/SOA = -100, 0, or +100 ms, respectively). Compared with the unrelated control, the distractors sharing atonal syllables with the picture names significantly facilitated the naming responses at -100- and 0-ms SOAs. In addition, the facilitation effect of sharing word-initial segments only appeared at 0-ms SOA, and null effects were found for sharing word-final segments. These results indicate that both syllables and subsyllabic units play important roles in Mandarin spoken word production and more critically that syllabic processing precedes subsyllabic processing. The current results lend strong support to the proximate units principle (O'Seaghdha, Chen, & Chen, 2010), which holds that the phonological structure of spoken word production is language-specific and that atonal syllables are the proximate phonological units in Mandarin Chinese. On the other hand, the significance of word-initial segments over word-final segments suggests that serial processing of segmental information seems to be universal across Germanic languages and Chinese, which remains to be verified in future studies.

Primary phonological planning units in spoken word production are language-specific: Evidence from an ERP study.

It is widely acknowledged in Germanic languages that segments are the primary planning units at the phonological encoding stage of spoken word production. Mixed results, however, have been found in Chinese, and it is still unclear what roles syllables and segments play in planning Chinese spoken word production. In the current study, participants were asked to first prepare and later produce disyllabic Mandarin words upon picture prompts and a response cue while electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded. Each two consecutive pictures implicitly formed a pair of prime and target, whose names shared the same word-initial atonal syllable or the same word-initial segments, or were unrelated in the control conditions. Only syllable repetition induced significant effects on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) after target onset: a widely distributed positivity in the 200- to 400-ms interval and an anterior positivity in the 400- to 600-ms interval. We interpret these to reflect syllable-size representations at the phonological encoding and phonetic encoding stages. Our results provide the first electrophysiological evidence for the distinct role of syllables in producing Mandarin spoken words, supporting a language specificity hypothesis about the primary phonological units in spoken word production.

Syllabic encoding during overt speech production in Cantonese: Evidence from temporal brain responses.

The time course of phonological encoding in overt Cantonese disyllabic word production was investigated using a picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore a distracting Chinese character. Participants' naming responses were faster, relative to an unrelated control, when the distractor overlapped with the target's word-initial or word-final syllables. Furthermore, ERP waves in the syllable-related conditions were more positive-going than those in the unrelated control conditions from 500ms to 650ms post target onset (i.e., a late positivity). The mean and peak amplitudes of this late positivity correlated with the size of phonological facilitation. More importantly, the onset of the late positivity associated with word-initial syllable priming was 44ms earlier than that associated with word-final syllable priming, suggesting that phonological encoding in overt speech runs incrementally and the encoding duration for one syllable unit is approximately 44ms. Although the size of effective phonological units might vary across languages, as suggested by previous speech production studies, the present data indicate that the incremental nature of phonological encoding is a universal mechanism.

Phonological units in spoken word production: insights from Cantonese.

Evidence from previous psycholinguistic research suggests that phonological units such as phonemes have a privileged role during phonological planning in Dutch and English (aka the segment-retrieval hypothesis). However, the syllable-retrieval hypothesis previously proposed for Mandarin assumes that only the entire syllable unit (without the tone) can be prepared in advance in speech planning. Using Cantonese Chinese as a test case, the present study was conducted to investigate whether the syllable-retrieval hypothesis can be applied to other Chinese spoken languages. In four implicit priming (form-preparation) experiments, participants were asked to learn various sets of prompt-response di-syllabic word pairs and to utter the corresponding response word upon seeing each prompt. The response words in a block were either phonologically related (homogeneous) or unrelated (heterogeneous). Participants' naming responses were significantly faster in the homogeneous than in the heterogeneous conditions when the response words shared the same word-initial syllable (without the tone) (Exps.1 and 4) or body (Exps.3 and 4), but not when they shared merely the same word-initial phoneme (Exp.2). Furthermore, the priming effect observed in the syllable-related condition was significantly larger than that in the body-related condition (Exp. 4). Although the observed syllable priming effects and the null effect of word-initial phoneme are consistent with the syllable-retrieval hypothesis, the body-related (sub-syllabic) priming effects obtained in this Cantonese study are not. These results suggest that the syllable-retrieval hypothesis is not generalizable to all Chinese spoken languages and that both syllable and sub-syllabic constituents are legitimate planning units in Cantonese speech production.

What are effective phonological units in Cantonese spoken word planning?

Two picture-word interference experiments were conducted to investigate the nature of effective phonological units in Cantonese spoken word production. The names of the pictures were Cantonese monosyllables with a consonant+vowel+consonant (CVC) structure. Participants' picture-naming responses were faster when the target (e.g., "star" /sing1/) and the distractor shared the same CVC component (e.g., /sing4/, meaning "city"), the same CV component (e.g., /sik6/, "eat"), or the same VC component (e.g., /ging2/, "region"), as opposed to when they were unrelated, and the facilitation effects observed were comparable in size. Also, similar facilitation effects were obtained across the CV+tone-related and the VC+tone-related conditions, whereas no reliable effect was found in the V+tone-related condition. These results indicate that an effective phonological unit in spoken word planning is neither a syllable (without tone) nor a segmental unit, and that the possible candidates lie between the two, at least in Cantonese.

Processing segmental and prosodic information in Cantonese word production.

Five experiments were conducted to investigate how subsyllabic, syllabic, and prosodic information is processed in Cantonese monosyllabic word production. A picture-word interference task was used in which a target picture and a distractor word were presented simultaneously or sequentially. In the first 3 experiments with visually presented distractors, null effects on naming latencies were found when the distractor and the picture name shared the onset, the rhyme, the tone, or both the onset and tone. However, significant facilitation effects were obtained when the target and the distractor shared the rhyme + tone (Experiment 2), the segmental syllable (Experiment 3), or the syllable + tone (Experiment 3). Similar results were found in Experiments 4 and 5 with spoken rather than visual distractors. Moreover, a significant facilitation effect was observed in the rhyme-related condition in Experiment 5, and this effect was not affected by the degree of phonological overlap between the target and the distractor. These results are interpreted in an interactive model, which allows feedback sending from the subsyllabic to the lexical level during the phonological encoding stage in Cantonese word production.