Name: interaction between phonological and semantic processes in visual word recognition using electrophysiology
Uploaded: 2021-06-29T14:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology at JoVE.com

This work was supported by Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62036001).

The protocol used for this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Tsinghua University.
1. Stimuli construction and presentation
<ol>
	<li>Stimuli construction
	<ol>
		<li>Stimuli preparation: Prepare target words containing approximately 140 Chinese two-character compounds, of which low- and high-frequency words account for half. Precede each target by three analogues: a phonologically identical word (homonymous word), a word with related meaning, and an irrelevant control w...

<ol>
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Experimental results and significance: 
The purpose of this protocol was to infer the following: 1) whether the word recognition model is a feedforward model or an interactive model and 2) the interaction between the phonological and semantic patterns in Chinese two-character compound recognition of high and low frequency under different tasks. An interference paradigm of phonological and semantic matching task using the ERP technique was adopted. The ERP responses preceded by homophones and unrelat...

The critical issue in any word recognition model is understanding the role of phonology in the process of semantic access1. For alphabetic languages, many studies consistently view phonology as playing an important role in semantic access, including English2,3,4, Hebrew5, French6, and Spanish7. In other words, written word recognition involves not only orthographic but also phonological and semantic processing. This observation in the interactive connectionist model is explained by extensions activated throughout the network, where orthography is associated with phonological and semantic representations through weighted connections8. This proliferation of activation provides the core mechanism for the visual word recognition model, which assumes that phonological and semantic representations are automatically activated in response to orthographic input9.
However, current empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis of interactive automation remains controversial. Some studies claim that the activation of phonological and semantic representations can be adjusted or prevented by task demands or attention, which implies a certain top-down influence on the high-level processes involved in word perception10,11. However, the aforementioned description has been questioned by many findings that report phonological and semantic effects in visual word recognition even though these representations are completely irrelevant to the task or cannot be directly accessed12, thereby supporting the view that semantics and phonology may be accessed automatically and forcibly during the reading process13. Therefore, there is uncertainty on whether the phonological and semantic activation in visual word recognition depends on the specific task or whether it occurs forcibly and automatically in a task-independent manner.
The answer to aforementioned question is difficult for Chinese readers. Compared to English, Chinese is a logographic script whose characters represent morphemes instead of phonemes14. At present, the role of phonology for semantic access to Chinese words remains controversial. Some studies have claimed that phonology plays an important role in semantic access to Chinese words15,16,17. Others, however, have held the opposite view18,19. After evaluating the aforementioned research for Chinese phonological processing, we found that the experimental paradigm and specific research methods differ. On the whole, it was mainly divided into two paradigms: word priming15,18,19 and violation paradigm in the sentence17,20,21. The target word is usually embedded at the end of the sentence in the violation paradigm22. In terms of language mechanism, a short two-word phrase is a more manageable unit than a complete sentence that is difficult to process23. In addition, variables that are difficult to control in a sentence, such as syntax, context, or other factors, may lead to different conclusions24. The word priming paradigm is a method commonly used to explore word recognition models, whether in alphabetic languages or Chinese. The task of this paradigm is to judge whether the target word preceded by the primes is a real word or pseudoword; that is, this paradigm usually contains only one lexical task. However, a single lexical decision task may not be the best choice to solve the problem of whether the activation of phonology and semantics depends on the task. Therefore, two different tasks may be more suitable for exploring this question.
Therefore, this research aimed to explore the role of phonology in Chinese word recognition and simultaneously attempt to determine whether the activation of phonology and semantics is in task independent. Our research includes two tasks using the interference paradigm: semantic judgment and phonological judgment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first event-related potential (ERP) study of Chinese two-character compound recognition using this interference paradigm, and this method rarely appears in studies of alphabetic languages. Specifically, in the semantic judgment task, participants must judge whether the target word and its precedent are semantically related, while in the phonological task, they must judge whether the paired words have the same pronunciation.
The former is a semantic matching task that does not require a priori phonological processing, and the latter is a phonological judgment task that does not require a priori semantic processing. Therefore, we compared homophone pairs and unrelated control groups in the semantic judgment task to reveal whether and how phonology affects semantic processing. Similarly, we compared semantically related word pairs with unrelated control conditions in the phonological judgment task to reveal whether and how semantics affect phonological processing. In addition, the aforementioned problem was verified in high- and low-frequency words. Thus, this complementary semantic and phonological judgment task can not only reveal the importance of phonological processing in Chinese word recognition but also reveal whether and how phonology and semantics interact.
If the phonology and semantic processes are early, automatic, and interactive, the effect of phonological and semantic activation should be observed in the response time of the two tasks. For ERP, phonological and semantic processes trigger two different electrophysiological markers2,7. In addition, their time courses and their spatial distributions should be different. An early positive component (P200) should reflect phonological processing, and the typical semantic processing marker N400 should also be identified20,21. We assumed that both the phonologically related pairs in the semantic task and the semantic-related pairs in the phonological task would cause a significant decrease in N400, which would have indicated that phonological processing may lead to some degree of activation at lexical-semantic levels. In addition, we monitored whether the P200, which characterizes phonological processing, appeared in the semantic judgment task or the phonological judgment task. In the phonological judgment task, semantic-related conditions trigger the P200, which can be seen as evidence of the early influence of semantics on phonological processing.

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	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>BrainAmp DC amplifier system (Brain Products GmbH)</td>
			<td>Brain Products, Gilching, Germany</td>
			<td></td>
			<td>BrainAmp S/N AMP13061964DC Input 5.6DC=150mA Operation 7mA Standby</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Easycap (Brain Products GmbH)</td>
			<td>Brain Products, Gilching, Germany</td>
			<td></td>
			<td>62 Ag/AgCl electrodes with a configuration of the international 10&#8211;20 system of electrode</td>
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interaction between phonological and semantic processes in visual word recognition using electrophysiology

Controversies have always existed in research related to reading abilities; on whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner based on orthographic information after which, other representations, such as phonology and semantics are activated, or whether these are fully interactive and high-level semantic information affects early processing. An interference paradigm was implemented in the presented protocol of phonological and semantic judgment tasks that utilized the same precede-target pairs to explore the relative order of phonological and semantic activation. The high- and low-frequency target words were preceded with three conditions: semantically related, phonological-related (homophones), or unrelated. The results showed that the induced P200 component of low-frequency word pairs was significantly greater than high-frequency words in both the semantic and phonological tasks. In addition, both the homophones in the semantic task and the semantically related pairs in the phonological task caused reduction in N400 when compared to the the control condition, word frequency-independently. It is worth noting that for the low-frequency pairs in the phonological judgment task, the P200 released by the semantically related word pairs was significantly larger than that in the control condition. Overall, semantic processing in phonological tasks and phonological processing in semantic tasks were found in both high- and low-frequency words, suggesting that the interaction between semantics and phonology may operate in a task-independent manner. However, the specific time this interaction occurred may have been affected by the task and frequency.

This protocol was used in a recent study to investigate the role of phonology in Chinese two-character compound recognition and to infer the word recognition model26. All stimuli used in this study were fully disclosed26. Three time windows were selected on the basis of global field power (GFP): at 100-150 ms, 160-280 ms, and 300- 500 ms for N1, P200, and N400 components, respectively26. The average amplitudes of the above two time windows were analy...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology at JoVE.com

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

We present a protocol to explore the relative activation sequence of phonology and semantics in visual word recognition. The results show that consistent with interactive accounts, semantic and phonological representations may be processed interactively, and higher-level linguistic representations may affect early processing.

Controversies have always existed in research related to reading abilities; on whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner based on ...

This protocol can help observe the specific interaction between phonological and semantic patterns in Chinese two-character compound recognition, and infer whether the word recognition is a feedforward or an interactive model. The main advantage is the presence of two distinct tasks of the interference paradigm, which is more conducive to exploring whether the interaction between phonology and semantics is task-independent, and how to interact under different tasks. It would be advisable to strictly control the frequency and the semantic relevance of the materials.In addition, try to minimize the repetition of target words in each block. Begin by instructing the participant to properly clean their scalp and dry their hair in the laboratory. Invite the participants to sit comfortably on a chair in the chamber where the experiment will be conducted.Instruct them not to move the chair. Use cotton swabs and facial scrubs to clean the skin under the participant's left eye for attaching the vertical electro-oculographic electrode, near the outer canthus of the right eye for the horizontal electro-oculographic electrode, and around the right and left mastoid bones for TP9 and TP10, which will be used as new offline references. Place the elastic cap on the participant's head, and make sure that the Cz electrode is at the center of the top of the head.Fix the electrode cap strap under the chin, with care to ensure that it is not too tight or too loose. Make sure that the cap and amplifier are connected to the recording system. Next, switch the recording software to the impedance monitoring interface.Ensure that the impedance of all electrodes does not exceed 5 kilo-ohms or 10 kilo-ohms. Starting with the reference and ground electrodes, pass the syringe filled with conductive gel through the small hole of an electrode to the scalp, and push the plunger to inject a small amount of conductive gel into the scalp, while being careful not to cause an overflow. Monitor the display system that displays the impedance in real time until the impedance drops to the threshold.After the reference and ground electrodes are prepared, reduce the impedance of the other electrodes in the same way. Tape the small holes on one side of the two electro-oculographic electrodes to prevent the injected conductive gel from leaking. Fix the electrodes to the bottom of the left eye and the outer canthus of the right eye, with tape.After all the electrodes are prepared, instruct the participants to relax and avoid excessive eye blinking and body movement during the experiment. Present the stimulus via the stimulus demonstration program, and let the participants practice in the practice section. Start the formal experiment and record the EEG information.If an electrode is loose or the resistance exceeds the threshold, refill the electrode when the participant is resting. Monitor the recording system while recording the EEG information. After the experiment is completed, save the EEG signal and turn off the recording system and amplifier.Then take off the participant's cap and instruct the participant to wash off the conductive gel from the hair and skin. Finally, reward the participants and thank them for their cooperation. Select semi-automatic ocular correction with independent component analysis.Compute the event-related potentials from 100 milliseconds to 600 milliseconds after the onset of the target word, with 100 milliseconds as the pre-target baseline. Set the EEG bandpass-filtered offline from 0.05 to 30 Hertz. Discard epochs exceeding plus or minus 80 microvolts by artifact rejection, and eliminate the trials of erroneous responses.For high-frequency pairs in the 100 to 150 milliseconds period, it was observed that unrelated pairs elicited a significantly more negative waveform than homophone condition. In the 300 to 500 milliseconds time window for the midline electrodes, it was observed that a target primed by homophones elicited significantly less negative amplitude than did the unrelated condition. In the P200 time window, the event-related potential signal was significantly more positive under semantically-related conditions than under unrelated conditions.In the N400 time window for the midline electrodes, it was observed that the target primed by semantically-related words released a significantly less negative amplitude than unrelated primes. This protocol helps to observe the interaction between phonological and semantic processes in visual word recognition.

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