This paper investigates whether or not lexical stress is used for lexical access in Spanish. A lexical decision task and a masking priming procedure were used to compare correctly-versus-incorrectly stressed words (e.g., "tecla-TECLA vs. tecla-TECLA"). SOA (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony) was manipulated at 33, 66, 100, and 143 ms. The results showed…

In models of visual word identification that incorporate inhibitory competition among activated lexical units, a word's higher frequency neighbors will be the word's strongest competitors. Preactivation of these neighbors by a prime is predicted to delay the word's identification. Using the masked priming paradigm (K. I. Forster & C. Davis, 1984,…

Human social, cognitive, and linguistic functioning depends on skills for rapidly processing action. Identifying distinct acts within the dynamic motion flow is one basic component of action processing; for example, skill at segmenting action is foundational to action categorization, verb learning, and comprehension of novel action sequences. Yet…

We used fMRI to investigate competition during language production in two word production tasks: object naming and color naming of achromatic line drawings. Generally, fMRI activation was higher for color naming. The line drawings were followed by a word (the distractor word) that referred to either the object, a related object, or an unrelated…

Traditional theories of Semitic morphology hold that two abstract morphemic units, the root (e.g., "k-t-b") and the word pattern (e.g., "-i-aa-"), are the basis for word formation (e.g., "kitaab" [book]). Previous lexical processing studies in Hebrew and Arabic have confirmed the independent morphemic status of these two units, and the root in…

We consider the problem of checking whether an organization conforms to a body of regulation. Conformance is studied in a runtime verification setting. The regulation is translated to a logic, from which we synthesize monitors. The monitors are evaluated as the state of an organization evolves over time, raising an alarm if a violation is…

A study of near-native sentence processing was carried out using the self-paced reading method. Twenty-three near-native speakers of Spanish were identified on the basis of native-like proficiency, age of onset of acquisition after 15 years, and a minimum of three years ongoing residency in Spanish-speaking countries. The sentence comprehension…

Although software testing has been well-studied in computer science, it has received little attention in natural language processing. Nonetheless, a fully developed methodology for glass box evaluation and testing of language processing applications already exists in the field methods of descriptive linguistics. This work lays out a number of…

The phonetics-phonology interface has long been debated; some linguists argue for a modular approach (Keating 1984, Pierrehumbert 1990, Zsiga 1997, Cohn 1998), while others argue that there is no interface, and that phonetics and phonology are one and the same (Browman & Goldstein 1989-1992, Ohala 1990). Recent proposals by Gafos (2002), and…

Background: The development of children's speech, language, and literacy skills is considered to build on a robust and intact speech-processing system, with normally functioning skills at all levels of input and output processing, as well as storage. There are a range of tasks available that assess input and output processing skills, however there…

The study is aimed at identifying hemispheric language dominance in both the right-handed and left-handed participants. Eighteen right-handed and 18 left-handed young volunteers were invited to listen for 80 times to a 720 ms duration Italian word. Signals from 16 electrodes were averaged and displayed both as traces and maps. When the word was…

Artificial grammar learning constitutes a well-established model for the acquisition of grammatical knowledge in a natural setting. Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that Broca's area (left BA 44/45) is similarly activated by natural syntactic processing and artificial grammar learning. The current study was conducted to investigate the…

Background: Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social-emotional, social-communicative, and language skills. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have found that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) evidence abnormalities in semantic processing, with particular difficulties in verbal comprehension.…

Brain lateralization refers to the division of labour between the two hemispheres in controlling a wide array of functions and is remarkably well developed in humans. Based on sex differences in lateralization of handedness and language, several hypotheses have postulated an effect of prenatal exposure to testosterone on human lateralization…

People were trained to decode noise-vocoded speech by hearing monosyllabic stimuli in distorted and unaltered forms. When later presented with different stimuli, listeners were able to successfully generalize their experience. However, generalization was modulated by the degree to which testing stimuli resembled training stimuli: Testing stimuli's…