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A picture is worth a thousand

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What can we conclude? Where do we go from here? What is phonology? ... Words that differ by only 1 sound. Ex) hat/bat, hat/hot, hat/ham ... conclude ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: A picture is worth a thousand


1
A picture is worth a thousand sounds???Interacti
ons of imageability and phonology
  • Gail Moroschan
  • and
  • Chris Westbury

2
Todays talk
  • What is phonology?
  • What is imageability?
  • Why should we expect an interaction?
  • The experiments
  • Single words
  • Sentences
  • What can we conclude?
  • Where do we go from here?

3
What is phonology?
  • How a word sounds
  • Phonological neighbors
  • Words that differ by only 1 sound
  • Ex) hat/bat, hat/hot, hat/ham
  • Phonological neighborhoods
  • How many phonological neighbors a word has
  • Ex) sink has many! (HPN)
  • Ex) wolf has few! (LPN)
  • Phonological neighborhood effect
  • LPN words have faster RTs in auditory tasks

4
What is imageability?
  • The extent to which you can form a mental image
    of something
  • Concrete words have high imageability
  • Ex) cat, desk, bicycle
  • Abstract words have low imageability
  • Ex) justice, thought, amount

5
The Concreteness Effect
  • Concrete words have faster RTs than abstract
    words in many tasks
  • Ex) lexical decision, naming, etc.
  • Dual Coding Theory (Paivio, 1986)
  • Two systems in processing
  • Verbal/Lexical system (words)
  • Imagery system (pictures)
  • Concrete words can use both systems
  • Abstract words only use verbal

6
Neurological evidence
  • fMRI study (Binder, Westbury, McKiernan, Possing,
    Medler, 2005)
  • Concrete words (orange) showed activation in
    sensory association areas
  • Abstract words (blue) activated areas in the
    frontal and temporal lobes associated with
    phonological processing

7
Why expect an interaction?
  • If concrete words use both words and images
    during processing but abstract words only use
    other words, then abstract words might be more
    sensitive to lexical factors such as phonological
    neighborhood size.
  • We would expect to see abstract HPN words take
    longer to react to than abstract LPN words, and
    no influence of phonology on concrete words.

8
The experiments - single words
  • Lexical decision task
  • Is it a word or not?
  • Stimuli - manipulated imageability and PN
  • Concrete/HPN words
  • Concrete/LPN words
  • Abstract/HPN words
  • Abstract/LPN words
  • Non-word fillers
  • Visual version and auditory version

9
The results - single words
  • Interaction effect found in auditory LD but not
    in visual LD
  • Abstract words are more sensitive to PN than
    concrete words

10
The experiments - sentences
  • Sentence plausibility judgment task
  • Does the sentence make sense or not?
  • Stimuli - both sensible and nonsense sentences
    made up of
  • Concrete/HPN words
  • Concrete/LPN words
  • Abstract/HPN words
  • Abstract/LPN words
  • Visual version and auditory version

11
The results - sentences
  • Interaction effect found in auditory experiment
    but not in visual experiment
  • Concrete words are more sensitive to PN than
    abstract words

12
What can we conclude from this?
  • Interactions of phonology and imageability were
    found in auditory experiments, but not visual
    experiments
  • Abstract words are sensitive to manipulations of
    phonology during single-word lexical access
  • Fits with dual coding theory as well as prior
    behavioral and neurological evidence
  • However, during sentence processing, concrete
    words rather than abstract words are influenced
    by phonology
  • Opposite to the results of processing single
    words

13
Where do we go from here?
  • Further ideas to explore
  • Different processes involved in sentences vs.
    words
  • Context effects in sentence processing?
  • Context availability theory (Schwanenflugel,
    1989)
  • Concreteness effects disappear in supportive
    sentences

14
Thank you!
  • Acknowledgements- I would like to thank Sara Knox
    and Nadia Ahmad for help with data collection.
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