The impact of capitalized German words on lexical access.
Journal
Psychological research
ISSN: 1430-2772
Titre abrégé: Psychol Res
Pays: Germany
ID NLM: 0435062
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Apr 2022
Apr 2022
Historique:
received:
07
12
2020
accepted:
25
05
2021
pubmed:
7
6
2021
medline:
26
3
2022
entrez:
6
6
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Leading models of visual word recognition assume that the process of word identification is driven by abstract, case-invariant units (e.g., table and TABLE activate the same abstract representation). But do these models need to be modified to meet nuances of orthography as in German, where the first letter of common nouns is capitalized (e.g., Buch [book] and Hund [dog], but blau [blue])? To examine the role of initial capitalization of German words in lexical access, we chose a semantic categorization task ("is the word an animal name?"). In Experiment 1, we compared German words in all-lowercase vs. initial capitalization (hund, buch, blau vs. Hund, Buch, Blau). Results showed faster responses for animal nouns with initial capitalization (Hund < hund) and faster responses for lowercase non-nouns (blau < Blau). Surprisingly, we found faster responses for lowercase non-animal nouns (buch < Buch). As the latter difference could derive from task demands (i.e., buch does not follow German orthographic rules and requires a "no" response), we replaced the all-lowercase format with an orthographically legal all-uppercase format in Experiment 2. Results showed an advantage for all nouns with initial capitalization (Hund < HUND and Buch < BUCH). These findings clearly show that initial capitalization in German words constitutes an essential part of the words' representations and is used during lexical access. Thus, models of visual word recognition, primarily focused on English orthography, should be expanded to the idiosyncrasies of other Latin-based orthographies.
Identifiants
pubmed: 34091714
doi: 10.1007/s00426-021-01540-3
pii: 10.1007/s00426-021-01540-3
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
891-902Subventions
Organisme : Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
ID : PSI2017-86210-P
Informations de copyright
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.
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