The Auditory English Lexicon Project: A multi-talker, multi-region psycholinguistic database of 10,170 spoken words and nonwords.

The Auditory English Lexicon Project (AELP) is a multi-talker, multi-region psycholinguistic database of 10,170 spoken words and 10,170 spoken nonwords. Six tokens of each stimulus were recorded as 44.1-kHz, 16-bit, mono WAV files by native speakers of American, British, and Singapore English, with one from each gender. Intelligibility norms, as determined by average identification scores and confidence ratings from between 15 and 20 responses per token, were obtained from 561 participants. Auditory lexical decision accuracies and latencies, with between 25 and 36 responses per token, were obtained from 438 participants. The database also includes a variety of lexico-semantic variables and structural indices for the words and nonwords, as well as participants' individual difference measures such as age, gender, language background, and proficiency. Taken together, there are a total of 122,040 sound files and over 4 million behavioral data points in the AELP. We describe some of the characteristics of this database. This resource is freely available from a website ( https://inetapps.nus.edu.sg/aelp/ ) hosted by the Department of Psychology at the National University of Singapore.

Consistency norms for 37,677 english words.

Consistency reflects the mapping between spelling and sound. That is, a word is feedforward consistent if its pronunciation matches that of similarly spelled words, and feedback consistent if its spelling matches that of similar pronounced words. For a quasi-regular language such as English, the study of consistency effects on lexical processing has been limited by the lack of readily accessible norms. In order to improve current methodological resources, feedforward (spelling-to-sound) and feedback (sound-to-spelling) consistency measures for 37,677 English words were computed. The consistency measures developed here are operationalized at the composite level for multisyllabic words, and at different sub-syllabic segments (onset, nucleus, coda, oncleus, and rime) for both monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. These measures constitute the largest database of English consistency norms to be developed, and will be a valuable resource for researchers to explore the effects of consistency on lexical processes, such as word recognition and spelling. The norms are available as supplementary material with this paper.

The role of semantic transparency in visual word recognition of compound words: A megastudy approach.

Previous studies on visual word recognition of compound words have provided evidence for the influence of lexical properties (e.g., length, frequency) and semantic transparency (the degree of relatedness in meaning between a compound word and its constituents) in morphological processing (e.g., to what extent is doorbell influenced by door and bell?). However, a number of questions in this domain, which are difficult to address with the available methodological resources, are still unresolved. We collected semantic transparency scores for 2,861 compound words at the constituent level (i.e., how strongly the overall meaning of a compound word is related to that of each constituent) and analyzed their effects on speeded pronunciation and lexical decision performance for the compound words using the English Lexicon Project (http://elexicon.wustl.edu) data. The results from both tasks indicated that our human-judged semantic transparency ratings for both the first and second constituents play a significant role in compound word processing. Moreover, additional analyses indicated that the human-judged semantic transparency scores at the constituent level accounted for more variance in compound word recognition performance than did either whole-word semantic transparency scores or corpus-based semantic distance scores.

Recognition memory for foreign language lexical stress.

This study investigated whether English speakers retained the lexical stress patterns of newly learned Spanish words. Participants studied spoken Spanish words (e.g., DUcha [shower], ciuDAD [city]; stressed syllables in capital letters) and subsequently performed a recognition task, in which studied words were presented with the same lexical stress pattern (DUcha) or the opposite lexical stress pattern (CIUdad). Participants were able to discriminate same- from opposite-stress words, indicating that lexical stress was encoded and used in the recognition process. Word-form similarity to English also influenced outcomes, with Spanish cognate words and words with trochaic stress (MANgo) being recognized more often and more quickly than Spanish cognate words with iambic stress (soLAR) and noncognates. The results suggest that while segmental and suprasegmental features of the native language influence foreign word recognition, foreign lexical stress patterns are encoded and not discarded in memory.

Testing the myth of the encoding-retrieval match.

The view that successful memory performance depends importantly on the extent to which there is a match between the encoding and retrieval conditions is commonplace in memory research. However, Nairne (Memory, 10, 389-395, 2002) proposed that this idea about trace-cue compatibility being the driving force behind memory retention is a myth, because one cannot make unequivocal predictions about performance by appealing to the encoding-retrieval match. What matters instead is the relative diagnostic value of the match, and not the absolute match. Three experiments were carried out in which participants memorised word pairs and tried to recall target words when given retrieval cues. The diagnostic value of the cue was varied by manipulating the extent to which the cues subsumed other memorised words and the level of the encoding-retrieval match. The results supported Nairne's (Memory, 10, 389-395, 2002) assertion that the diagnostic value of retrieval cues is a better predictor of memory performance than the absolute encoding-retrieval match.

LexiCAL: A calculator for lexical variables.

While a number of tools have been developed for researchers to compute the lexical characteristics of words, extant resources are limited in their useability and functionality. Specifically, some tools require users to have some prior knowledge of some aspects of the applications, and not all tools allow users to specify their own corpora. Additionally, current tools are also limited in terms of the range of metrics that they can compute. To address these methodological gaps, this article introduces LexiCAL, a fast, simple, and intuitive calculator for lexical variables. Specifically, LexiCAL is a standalone executable that provides options for users to calculate a range of theoretically influential surface, orthographic, phonological, and phonographic metrics for any alphabetic language, using any user-specified input, corpus file, and phonetic system. LexiCAL also comes with a set of well-documented Python scripts for each metric, that can be reproduced and/or modified for other research purposes.

False recognition modality effects in short-term memory: Reversing the auditory advantage.

The auditory advantage in short-term false recognition - reduced false memories for auditory compared to visually presented words (Olszewska, Reuter-lorenz, Munier, & Bendler, 2015), has been attributed to greater item distinctiveness in auditory compared to visual memory traces. If so, varying auditory trace distinctiveness should influence false recognition rates. Phonologically and semantically related words were presented visually or aurally. The auditory advantage for semantic lists was replicated but a reversal was observed for phonological lists. Reducing modality-specific acoustic and phonological distinctiveness by increasing phonological similarity led to increased false memory. The findings are consistent with a framework positing the generation of input-dependent memory traces and the role of relative distinctiveness in influencing short-term memory.

Cross-modal masked repetition and semantic priming in auditory lexical decision.

The underlying processes and mechanisms supporting the recognition of visually and auditorily presented words have received considerable attention in the literature. To a lesser extent, the interplay between visual and spoken lexical representations has also been investigated using cross-modal lexical processing paradigms, yielding evidence that auditorily presented words influence visual word recognition, and vice versa. The present study extends this work by examining and comparing the relative sizes of cross-modal repetition (cat-CAT) and semantic (dog-CAT) priming in auditory lexical decision, using heavily masked, briefly presented visual primes and a common set of auditory targets. Even when conscious awareness of the prime was minimized, reliable cross-modal repetition and semantic priming was observed. More critically, repetition priming was stronger than semantic priming, consistent with the idea that multiple pathways connect the two modalities. Implications of the findings for the bidirectional interactive activation model (Grainger & Ferrand, 1994) are discussed.

An item-level analysis of lexical-semantic effects in free recall and recognition memory using the megastudy approach.

Psycholinguists have developed a number of measures to tap different aspects of a word's semantic representation. The influence of these measures on lexical processing has collectively been described as semantic richness effects. However, the effects of these word properties on memory are currently not well understood. This study examines the relative contributions of lexical and semantic variables in free recall and recognition memory at the item-level, using a megastudy approach. Hierarchical regression of recall and recognition performance on a number of lexical-semantic variables showed task-general effects where the structural component, frequency, number of senses, and arousal accounted for unique variance in both free recall and recognition memory. Task-specific effects included number of features, imageability, and body-object interaction, which accounted for unique variance in recall, whereas age of acquisition, familiarity, and extremity of valence accounted for unique variance in recognition. Forward selection regression analyses generally converged on these findings. Hierarchical regression also revealed that lexical variables accounted for more variance in recognition compared with recall, whereas semantic variables accounted for more unique variance above and beyond lexical variables in recall compared with recognition. Implications of the findings are discussed.

How We Think about Temporal Words: A Gestural Priming Study in English and Chinese.

Spatial metaphors are used to represent and reason about time. Such metaphors are typically arranged along the sagittal axis in most languages. For example, in English, "The future lies ahead of us" and "We look back on our past." This is less straightforward for Chinese. Specifically, both the past and future can either be behind or ahead. The present study aims to explore these cross-linguistic differences by priming auditory targets (e.g., tomorrow) with either a congruent (i.e., pointing forwards) or incongruent (i.e., pointing backwards) gesture. Two groups of college-age young adult participants (English and Chinese speakers) made temporal classifications of words after watching a gestural prime. If speakers represent time along the sagittal axis, they should respond faster if the auditory target is preceded with a gesture indicating a congruent vs. incongruent spatial location. Results showed that English speakers responded faster to congruent gesture-word pairs than to incongruent pairs, mirroring spatio-temporal metaphors commonly recruited to talk about time in their native language. However, such an effect of congruency was not found for Chinese speakers. These findings suggest that while the spatio-temporal metaphors commonly recruited to talk about time help to structure the mental timelines of English speakers, the varying instances in how time is represented along the sagittal axis in Chinese may lead to a more variable mental timeline as well. In addition, our findings demonstrate that gestures may not only be a means of accessing concrete concepts in the mind, as shown in previous studies, but may be used to access abstract ones as well.

The roles of semantic similarity and proactive interference in the word length effect.

We examined the influence of semantic similarity and proactive interference (PI) on the word length effect (WLE) in immediate serial recall. Word length was manipulated by comparing memory for monosyllabic versus multisyllabic words. PI effects were evaluated by manipulating semantic similarity in the to-be-remembered lists and examining its impact on the WLE's magnitude across eight-trial blocks. Words were sampled from a single semantic category across the entire block, from a single category within the list, or from different categories. Robust WLEs were observed in single-category blocks and when words were from different categories. However, when all the within-list words were from the same semantic category, the WLE was sharply attenuated. Except for the within-list semantic similarity condition, there was a buildup in PI levels in the form of protrusion errors across trials. However, the magnitude of the WLE did not increase with the PI buildup, suggesting that it was not affected by PI across trials.

Semantic Richness Effects in Spoken Word Recognition: A Lexical Decision and Semantic Categorization Megastudy.

A large number of studies have demonstrated that semantic richness dimensions [e.g., number of features, semantic neighborhood density, semantic diversity , concreteness, emotional valence] influence word recognition processes. Some of these richness effects appear to be task-general, while others have been found to vary across tasks. Importantly, almost all of these findings have been found in the visual word recognition literature. To address this gap, we examined the extent to which these semantic richness effects are also found in spoken word recognition, using a megastudy approach that allows for an examination of the relative contribution of the various semantic properties to performance in two tasks: lexical decision, and semantic categorization. The results show that concreteness, valence, and number of features accounted for unique variance in latencies across both tasks in a similar direction-faster responses for spoken words that were concrete, emotionally valenced, and with a high number of features-while arousal, semantic neighborhood density, and semantic diversity did not influence latencies. Implications for spoken word recognition processes are discussed.

Talker variability and recognition memory: instance-specific and voice-specific effects.

The author investigated voice context effects in recognition memory for words spoken by multiple talkers by comparing performance when studied words were repeated with same, different, or new voices at test. Hits and false alarms increased when words were tested with studied voices compared with unstudied voices. Discrimination increased only when the exact same voice was used. A trend toward conservatism in response bias was observed when test words switched to increasingly unfamiliar voices. Taken together, the overall findings suggest that the voice-specific attributes of individual talkers are preserved in long-term memory. Implications for the role of instance-specific matching and voice-specific familiarity processes and the nature of spoken-word representation are discussed.

Multimodal perceptual organization of speech: Evidence from tone analogs of spoken utterances.

Theoretical and practical motives alike have prompted recent investigations of multimodal speech perception. Theoretically, multimodal studies have extended the conceptualization of perceptual organization beyond the familiar modality-bound accounts deriving from Gestalt psychology. Practically, such investigations have been driven by a need to understand the proficiency of multimodal speech perception using an electrocochlear prosthesis for hearing. In each domain, studies have shown that perceptual organization of speech can occur even when the perceiver's auditory experience departs from natural speech qualities. Accordingly, our research examined auditor-visual multimodal integration of videotaped faces and selected acoustic constituents of speech signals, each realized as a single sinewave tone accompanying a video image of an articulating face. The single tone reproduced the frequency and amplitude of the phonatory cycle or of one of the lower three oral formants. Our results showed a distinct advantage for the condition pairing the video image of the face with a sinewave replicating the second formant, despite its unnatural timbre and its presentation in acoustic isolation from the rest of the speech signal. Perceptual coherence of multimodal speech in these circumstances is established when the two modalities concurrently specify the same underlying phonetic attributes.

Articulation effects in melody recognition memory.

Various surface features-timbre, tempo, and pitch-influence melody recognition memory, but articulation format effects, if any, remain unknown. For the first time, these effects were examined. In Experiment 1, melodies that remained in the same, or appeared in a different but similar, articulation format from study to test were recognized better than were melodies that were presented in a distinct format at test. A similar articulation format adequately induced matching processes to enhance recognition. Experiment 2 revealed that melodies rated as perceptually dissimilar on the basis of the location of the articulation mismatch did not impair recognition performance, suggesting an important boundary condition for articulation format effects on memory recognition-the matching of the memory trace and recognition probe may depend more on the overall proportion, rather than the temporal location, of the mismatch. The present findings are discussed in terms of a global matching advantage hypothesis.

Observing neighborhood effects without neighbors.

With a new metric called phonological Levenshtein distance (PLD20), the present study explores the effects of phonological similarity and word frequency on spoken word recognition, using polysyllabic words that have neither phonological nor orthographic neighbors, as defined by neighborhood density (the N-metric). Inhibitory effects of PLD20 were observed for these lexical hermits: Close-PLD20 words were recognized more slowly than distant PLD20 words, indicating lexical competition. Importantly, these inhibitory effects were found only for low- (not high-) frequency words, in line with previous findings that phonetically related primes inhibit recognition of low-frequency words. These results indicate that the properties of PLD20--a continuous measure of word-form similarity--make it a promising new metric for quantifying phonological distinctiveness in spoken word recognition research.

Distributional analyses in auditory lexical decision: neighborhood density and word-frequency effects.

In the present article, the effects of phonological neighborhood density and word frequency in spoken word recognition were examined using distributional analyses of response latencies in auditory lexical decision. A density x frequency interaction was observed in mean latencies; frequency effects were larger for low-density words than for high-density words. Distributional analyses further revealed that for low-density words, frequency effects were reflected in both distributional shifting and skewing, whereas for high-density words, frequency effects were purely mediated by distributional skewing. The results suggest that word frequency plays a role in early auditory word recognition only when there is relatively little competition between similar-sounding words, and that frequency effects in high-density words reflect postlexical checking.

Proactive interference and cuing effects in short-term cued recall: does foil context matter?

Tehan and Humphreys's (1995, 1996) short-term cued recall paradigm showed that recall in short-term memory is cue driven. In critical trials, the participants studied two blocks of four words each and were required to forget the first block while remembering the second block. A foil in the first block (e.g., orange) was related to a target (e.g., carrot) in the second block. Proactive interference (PI) was evident when a retrieval cue was used that subsumed the foil and the target (e.g., type of juice), but not when a cue was used that subsumed only the target (e.g., type of vegetable). Four experiments were performed to examine the extent to which contextual organization in the foil block would enhance or diminish the foil's efficacy in creating PI. A novel condition was included in which the words in the foil block were studied in a phonologically related context but the target was cued semantically, and vice versa with a semantic context and phonological cue. There were no differences in recall accuracy between conditions with and without contextual organization, but reliable increases in foil intrusions were observed when contextual organization was present. Contextual organization enhanced the foil, rather than diminished it, but the strengthened foil generated PI only when the cue subsumed the foil and the target and had no effect when the cue subsumed only the target. The results are consistent with a cue-driven retrieval interpretation of short-term recall.

Effects of lexical competition on immediate memory span for spoken words.

Current theories and models of the structural organization of verbal short-term memory are primarily based on evidence obtained from manipulations of features inherent in the short-term traces of the presented stimuli, such as phonological similarity. In the present study, we investigated whether properties of the stimuli that are not inherent in the short-term traces of spoken words would affect performance in an immediate memory span task. We studied the lexical neighbourhood properties of the stimulus items, which are based on the structure and organization of words in the mental lexicon. The experiments manipulated lexical competition by varying the phonological neighbourhood structure (i.e., neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency) of the words on a test list while controlling for word frequency and intra-set phonological similarity (family size). Immediate memory span for spoken words was measured under repeated and nonrepeated sampling procedures. The results demonstrated that lexical competition only emerged when a nonrepeated sampling procedure was used and the participants had to access new words from their lexicons. These findings were not dependent on individual differences in short-term memory capacity. Additional results showed that the lexical competition effects did not interact with proactive interference. Analyses of error patterns indicated that item-type errors, but not positional errors, were influenced by the lexical attributes of the stimulus items. These results complement and extend previous findings that have argued for separate contributions of long-term knowledge and short-term memory rehearsal processes in immediate verbal serial recall tasks.