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We present a new database of lexical decision times for English words and nonwords, for which two groups of British participants each responded to 14,365 monosyllabic and disyllabic words and the same number of nonwords for a total duration of 16 h (divided over multiple sessions). This database, called the British Lexicon Project (BLP), fills an important gap between the Dutch Lexicon Project (DLP; Keuleers, Diependaele, & Brysbaert, Frontiers in Language Sciences . Psychology, 1, 174, 2010 ) and the English Lexicon Project (ELP; Balota et al., 2007 ), because it applies the repeated measures design of the DLP to the English language. The high correlation between the BLP and ELP data indicates that a high percentage of variance in lexical decision data sets is systematic variance, rather than noise, and that the results of megastudies are rather robust with respect to the selection and presentation of the stimuli. Because of its design, the BLP makes the same analyses possible as the DLP, offering researchers with a new interesting data set of word-processing times for mixed effects analyses and mathematical modeling. The BLP data are available at http://crr.ugent.be/blp and as Electronic Supplementary Materials .

Pseudowords play an important role in psycholinguistic experiments, either because they are required for performing tasks, such as lexical decision, or because they are the main focus of interest, such as in nonwordreading and nonce-inflection studies. We present a pseudoword generator that improves on current methods. It allows for the generation of written polysyllabic pseudowords that obey a given language’s phonotactic constraints. Given a word or nonword template, the algorithm can quickly generate pseudowords that match the template in subsyllabic structure and transition frequencies without having to search through a list with all possible candidates. Currently, the program is available for Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish, Serbian, and Basque, and, with little effort, it can be expanded to other languages.

The present study brings together methods of extensive reading studies and eye-movement research to track the cognitive effects of exposure frequency on vocabulary processing and learning. Forty-two advanced second language learners of English read a stage 1 graded reader, Goodbye Mr. Hollywood , on a computer screen while their eye movements were recorded. The eye-tracking task was followed by comprehension questions and vocabulary posttests. Target vocabulary consisted of 20 pseudo words and 20 known words with a range of repetition from 1 to 30. Eye-movement data showed that readers spent more time on pseudo words than on familiar words and that fixation times decreased across encounters with more attention given to target words on early encounters. Repeated exposure supported form recognition but was not as significant for meaning recall and recognition. Total times spent on each encounter was positively associated with learning success in all vocabulary measures. The amount of attention, as reflected in total reading times on each pseudo word, positively predicted learning outcomes above and beyond the number of encounters. Results of the study add a cognitive dimension to the concept of engagement in lexical learning in the process of incidental learning from second language reading.

Purpose Dynamic assessment (DA) has generally been accepted and recommended for use with bilingual children; however, no meta-analysis or systematic review of the diagnostic accuracy for language impairment within this population exists. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the current use of DA and its diagnostic accuracy for language impairment in bilingual children. Method Through a key word search of PsycINFO, ERIC, Academic Search Premier, and MEDLINE via EBSCOhost, 7 studies were identified. Participants ranged from 3 to 8 years old. Areas of language addressed through DA included labeling single words, morpheme rule learning, ability to learn nonwords, and narratives. Study results were analyzed with respect to diagnostic accuracy, participant modifiability, and methodological quality. Results Overall, participants with typically developing language received higher scores on the language assessments used in DA studies compared to participants with a language impairment. Gain scores were generally not useful for differentiating between children who did or did not have language impairments. However, clinician judgments of modifiability during the teaching phase of DA consistently yielded significant group effects favoring the typically developing children. Across the 7 studies, sensitivity and specificity were reasonably high, with all studies meeting or close to meeting the set criteria (≥ 0.8). Conclusion Suggestive evidence supports the use of DA for diagnosing language disorders in bilingual children. However, limitations in the methodological quality of the studies that were reviewed could have resulted in inflated diagnostic accuracy and decreased validity. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8232926.

Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to establish a baseline of the vowel and consonant identification scores in prelingually and postlingually deaf users of multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) tested with consonant-vowel-consonant and vowel-consonant-vowel nonsense syllables. Method: Six electronic databases were searched for peer-reviewed articles reporting consonant and vowel identification scores in CI users measured by nonsense words. Relevant studies were independently assessed and screened by 2 reviewers. Consonant and vowel identification scores were presented in forest plots and compared between studies in a meta-analysis. Results: Forty-seven articles with 50 studies, including 647 participants, thereof 581 postlingually deaf and 66 prelingually deaf, met the inclusion criteria of this study. The mean performance on vowel identification tasks for the postlingually deaf CI users was 76.8% (N = 5), which was higher than the mean performance for the prelingually deaf CI users (67.7%; N = 1). The mean performance on consonant identification tasks for the postlingually deaf CI users was higher (58.4%; N = 44) than for the prelingually deaf CI users (46.7%; N = 6). The most common consonant confusions were found between those with same manner of articulation (/k/ as /t/, /m/ as /n/, and /p/ as /t/). Conclusions: The mean performance on consonant identification tasks for the prelingually and postlingually deaf CI users was found. There were no statistically significant differences between the scores for prelingually and postlingually deaf CI users. The consonants that were incorrectly identified were typically confused with other consonants with the same acoustic properties, namely, voicing, duration, nasality, and silent gaps. A univariate metaregression model, although not statistically significant, indicated that duration of implant use in postlingually deaf adults predict a substantial portion of their consonant identification ability. As there is no ceiling effect, a nonsense syllable identification test may be a useful addition to the standard test battery in audiology clinics when assessing the speech perception of CI users.

The identification of words in continuous speech, known as speech segmentation, is a critical early step in language acquisition. This process is partially supported by statistical learning, the ability to extract patterns from the environment. Given that speech segmentation represents a potential bottleneck for language acquisition, patterns in speech may be extracted very rapidly, without extensive exposure. This hypothesis was examined by exposing participants to continuous speech streams composed of novel repeating nonsense words. Learning was measured on-line using a reaction time task. After merely one exposure to an embedded novel word, learners demonstrated significant learning effects, as revealed by faster responses to predictable than to unpredictable syllables. These results demonstrate that learners gained sensitivity to the statistical structure of unfamiliar speech on a very rapid timescale. This ability may play an essential role in early stages of language acquisition, allowing learners to rapidly identify word candidates and \"break in\" to an unfamiliar language.

We use nonverbal and verbal emotion cues to determine how others are feeling. Most studies in vocal emotion perception do not consider the influence of verbal content, using sentences with nonsense words or words that carry no emotional meaning. These online studies aimed to validate 95 sentences with verbal content intended to convey 10 emotions. Participants were asked to select the emotion that best described the emotional meaning of the sentence. Study 1 included 436 participants and Study 2 included 193. The Simpson diversity index was applied as a measure of dispersion of responses. Across the two studies, 38 sentences were labelled as representing 10 emotion categories with a low degree of diversity in participant responses. Expanding current databases beyond basic emotion categories is important for researchers exploring the interaction between tone of voice and verbal content, and/or people’s capacity to make subtle distinctions between their own and others’ emotions.

Lexical tones are widely believed to be a formidable learning challenge for adult speakers of nontonal languages. While difficulties—as well as rapid improvements—are well documented for beginning second language (L2) learners, research with more advanced learners is needed to understand how tone perception difficulties impact word recognition once learners have a substantial vocabulary. The present study narrows in on difficulties suggested in previous work, which found a dissociation in advanced L2 learners between highly accurate tone identification and largely inaccurate lexical decision for tone words. We investigate a “best-case scenario” for advanced L2 tone word processing by testing performance in nearly ideal listening conditions—with words spoken clearly and in isolation. Under such conditions, do learners still have difficulty in lexical decision for tone words? If so, is it driven by the quality of lexical representations or by L2 processing routines? Advanced L2 and native Chinese listeners made lexical decisions while an electroencephalogram was recorded. Nonwords had a first syllable with either a vowel or tone that differed from that of a common disyllabic word. As a group, L2 learners performed less accurately when tones were manipulated than when vowels were manipulated. Subsequent analyses showed that this was the case even in the subset of items for which learners showed correct and confident tone identification in an offline written vocabulary test. Event-related potential results indicated N400 effects for both nonword conditions in L1, but only vowel N400 effects in L2, with tone responses intermediate between those of real words and vowel nonwords. These results are evidence of the persistent difficulty most L2 learners have in using tones for online word recognition, and indicate it is driven by a confluence of factors related to both L2 lexical representations and processing routines. We suggest that this tone nonword difficulty has real-world implications for learners: It may result in many toneless word representations in their mental lexicons, and is likely to affect the efficiency with which they can learn new tone words.

Purpose: The evaluation of spelling performance in aphasia reveals deficits in written language and can facilitate the design of targeted writing treatments. Nevertheless, manual scoring of spelling performance is time-consuming, laborious, and error prone. We propose a novel method based on the use of distance metrics to automatically score spelling. This study compares six automatic distance metrics to identify the metric that best corresponds to the gold standard--manual scoring--using data from manually obtained spelling scores from individuals with primary progressive aphasia. Method: Three thousand five hundred forty word and nonword spelling productions from 42 individuals with primary progressive aphasia were scored manually. The gold standard--the manual scores--were compared to scores from six automated distance metrics: sequence matcher ratio, Damerau-Levenshtein distance, normalized Damerau-Levenshtein distance, Jaccard distance, Masi distance, and Jaro-Winkler similarity distance. We evaluated each distance metric based on its correlation with the manual spelling score. Results: All automatic distance scores had high correlation with the manual method for both words and nonwords. The normalized Damerau-Levenshtein distance provided the highest correlation with the manual scoring for both words (r[subscript s] = 0.99) and nonwords (r[subscript s] = 0.95). Conclusions: The high correlation between the automated and manual methods suggests that automatic spelling scoring constitutes a quick and objective approach that can reliably substitute the existing manual and time-consuming spelling scoring process, an important asset for both researchers and clinicians.

We introduce CurmElo, a forced-choice approach to producing a preference ranking of an arbitrary set of objects that combines the Elo algorithm with novel techniques for detecting and correcting for (1) preference heterogeneity induced polarization in preferences among raters, and (2) intransitivity in preference rankings. We detail the application of CurmElo to the problem of generating approximately preference-neutral identifiers, in this case four-letter and five-letter nonsense words patterned on the phonological conventions of the English language, using a population of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. We find evidence that human raters have significant non-uniform preferences over these nonsense words, and we detail the consequences of this finding for social science work that utilizes identifiers without accounting for the bias this can induce. In addition, we describe how CurmElo can be used to produce rankings of arbitrary features or dimensions of preference of a set of objects relative to a population of raters.