Language and Cognitive Processes

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Fully transparent orthography, yet lexical reading aloud: The lexicality effect in Italian Giovanni Pagliuca ab; Lisa S. Arduino bc; Laura Barca ab; Cristina Burani b a Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK b Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy c Institute of Psychology, University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy Online Publication Date: 01 April 2008 To cite this Article: Pagliuca, Giovanni, Arduino, Lisa S., Barca, Laura and Burani, Cristina (2008) 'Fully transparent orthography, yet lexical reading aloud: The lexicality effect in Italian', Language and Cognitive Processes, 23:3, 422 — 433 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/01690960701626036 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690960701626036

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LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES 2008, 23 (3), 422433

Fully transparent orthography, yet lexical reading aloud: The lexicality effect in Italian Giovanni Pagliuca Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK, and Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy

Lisa S. Arduino Institute of Psychology, University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy, and Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy

Laura Barca Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK, and Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy

Cristina Burani Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy

This is the first study that reports the lexicality effect (i.e., words read better than nonwords) in Italian with fully transparent and methodologically well-controlled stimuli. We investigated how words and nonwords are read aloud in the Italian transparent orthography, in which there is an almost strict one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Contrary to the claim that in such orthography word naming is accomplished primarily by the nonlexical assembly route, we found that words were named faster than nonwords, regardless of their frequency (high or low) or the composition of the experimental list (pure vs. mixed blocks). These findings show that the lexical route is the main one used by readers even in a language with a transparent orthography. Corresponding should be addressed to Cristina Burani, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, CNR, Via S.Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185 ROMA, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] This work was supported by MIUR-FIRB Grant RBAU01LE9P to Cristina Burani. We thank Stefania Marcolini, Despina Paizi, and Pierluigi Zoccolotti for valuable discussions on a preceding version of the manuscript. Giovanni Pagliuca, Laura Barca, and Cristina Burani are members of the Marie Curie RTN ‘Language and Brain’ (European Commission, MRTN-CT2004-512141). # 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business http://www.psypress.com/lcp

DOI: 10.1080/01690960701626036

THE LEXICALITY EFFECT IN ITALIAN

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INTRODUCTION Word reading aloud is a process during which a string of letters activates a phonological representation of the stimuli to be uttered. According to the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model (Coltheart, 1978; Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001), there are two different procedures for converting print to speech: a lexical route, which involves accessing a stored lexical representation of the word, and a nonlexical route, which involves assembling a pronunciation by the application of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. The lexical route is used primarily to name words that are stored in the lexicon, while the nonlexical route is employed to read nonwords, and can be used to read low-frequency words and/or regular words. There has been a long controversy regarding how the two routes are used in different writing systems. It has been claimed (Fiez, 2000; Frost, 1994; Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987; Paap & Noel, 1991) that while word naming in opaque orthographies, such as English, Chinese, or Hebrew relies on lexical knowledge, in a shallow orthography, such as Serbo-Croatian or Italian (which have an almost strict one-to-one spelling-sound mapping), word naming is primarily mediated by a sublexical code and relies on the use of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rules. According to this view, in transparent scripts the nonlexical route is assumed to be faster than in opaque orthographies and should weaken the lexical effects. However, it has been reported that words are named faster than nonwords in shallow scripts as well (for Serbo-Croatian, Katz & Feldman, 1983; for Japanese, Besner & Hildebrandt, 1987; for Persian, Baluch & Besner, 1991). This marker of lexical reading the lexicality effect has not yet been reported convincingly for Italian. To the best of our knowledge, only two studies on Italian have compared word vs. nonword naming. Tabossi and Laghi (1992) showed faster naming of words than nonwords, when target stimuli were preceded by primes (semantically related or unrelated to the targets). Paulesu et al. (2000) showed that Italian readers were slower at reading nonwords as compared to words, although this difference was smaller than for English readers. Both these studies considered only the difference between high-frequency words and nonwords and did not assess whether also low-frequency words are read faster than nonwords. Neither of the aforementioned studies varied the composition of the experimental list, nor did the authors control their materials for relevant psycholinguistic variables such as orthographic neighbourhood of the stimuli or two initial phonemes. In this paper we present the first systematic and methodologically controlled evidence for the lexicality effect in Italian. In our experiment, both high-frequency words and low-frequency words were compared with


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corresponding non-words. Furthermore, stimuli were named in different list contexts. It has been shown that words are named faster when presented in ‘pure’ blocks that consist of words only, than in blocks mixed with nonwords (e.g., Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997; Monsell, Patterson, Graham, Hughes, & Milroy, 1992). Such a result has been interpreted according to the ‘route deemphasis account’ (Monsell et al., 1992), and has been framed within the DRC model (Coltheart & Rastle, 1994; Rastle & Coltheart, 1999) as evidence that the presence of nonwords in a list may result in shifting from the lexical route to the nonlexical route. In contrast, the time-criterion account (Chateau & Lupker, 2003; Kinoshita, Lupker, & Rastle, 2004; Lupker et al., 1997; Taylor & Lupker, 2001) explains the list composition effects in terms of the speed with which the context stimuli within a list are named, irrespective of which route (lexical or nonlexical) they engage. The perceived difficulty of the stimuli leads to strategically adjusting the generation of an acceptable criterion appropriate for all the stimuli to be named. Readers attempt to homogenise the point in time at which they produce an articulation: Mixing words, that are named quickly in pure blocks, with nonwords that are named slowly in pure blocks slows down the fast words and speeds up the slow nonwords. Most of the studies on English have investigated the effects of the manipulation of blocking conditions with high- and low-frequency irregular words mixed with nonwords, in an attempt to contrast a condition in which presumably lexical knowledge must be used for a correct pronunciation, with a condition in which sublexical knowledge would be required. Two exceptions are the experiment 2 by Lupker et al. (1997) and the experiment by Kinoshita et al. (2004), in which the words used were regular. Interestingly, in both experiments the lexicality effect did not disappear in mixed lists, neither for high-frequency nor low-frequency regular words. According to the strategic ‘route de-emphasis account’, the blocking manipulation should be less effective on regular words, than on irregular words. Specifically, the lexicality effect is not expected on low-frequency regular words either in blocked or in mixed lists, because these words, similarly to nonwords, are preferentially named through assembled phonology. In Italian, mostly regular words exist. Hence, according to the latter account no lexicality effect is expected on low-frequency words. The DRC model does not make a clear prediction for Italian. However, the assumption is that ‘For languages where few words are irregular, a highly active nonlexical route would not be as harmful as it would be for English; perhaps that is why Italian is read aloud more rapidly than English (Paulesu et al., 2000)’ (Coltheart et al., 2001, p. 237). In the present study, we investigate whether there might be evidence contrary to such an active nonlexical route in Italian. If in transparent



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orthographies, similarly to opaque orthographies, the lexical route is never completely shut down, representing the main route active in reading words aloud, an attenuation but not elimination of the lexicality effect is expected, when words are mixed with nonwords. In our experiment, high- and low-frequency words were presented in pure blocks (composed entirely of one type of stimuli) or in mixed blocks with nonwords. Such a design allowed us to test whether there is a superiority of words over nonwords (lexicality effect) in terms of speed and accuracy for high-frequency as well as for low-frequency words even in the context of nonwords, which may facilitate the use of the assembly route over the addressed route (Monsell et al., 1992). Fully shallow stimuli were employed to test the lexicality effect. It has been claimed that Italian is not a fully transparent orthography because of the presence of unpredictable stress assignment in naming three- and foursyllable words (Burani & Arduino, 2004; Colombo, 1992), and of the letters ‘c’ and ‘g’ which have more than one pronunciation, depending on the following letter. Due to the ambiguity of these letters the reading process may be slowed down, mainly for low-frequency words (Burani, Barca, & Ellis, 2006). In the present experiment we used disyllabic words which, in Italian, are always stressed on the penultimate syllable to avoid lexical involvement caused by stress assignment. We excluded stimuli that contained the letters ‘c’ and ‘g’. Consequently, we assessed the lexicality effect with completely shallow stimuli.

METHOD Participants Forty university students, all native Italian speakers, participated in the experiment.

Materials and design Two sets of 24 words each were used. One set contained high frequency words and the other low frequency words. All the stimuli were disyllabic, four to six letters long, stressed on the penultimate syllable. They were selected from the LEXVAR database (Barca, Burani, & Arduino, 2002). The nonword list was composed of 48 items, 24 of which were derived from the high-frequency words and 24 from the low-frequency words, by changing at least one letter (or in most cases 2) of the original word. The four types of stimuli were matched for: two initial phonemes (Kessler, Treiman, & Mullennix, 2002), number of letters, bigram frequency, N-size (number of orthographic word neighbours), summed frequency of the neighbours


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(Wagenmakers & Raaijmakers, 2006), number of geminates, and diphthongs (Burani & Cafiero, 1991). All the stimuli (Appendix A) contained only letters with a one-to-one grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence (see Table 1 for characteristics of the stimuli). Ninety-six fillers (half words and half nonwords) were selected. The 48 word fillers were matched for initial phoneme, number of letters, and frequency (high and low) with the word targets. The 48 nonword fillers were matched for initial phoneme, and number of letters with the nonword targets. Considering that the blocks would be too short if only the critical stimuli were included, the fillers served to induce further the effect of list blocking. The experimental sessions consisted of 4 pure blocks and 4 mixed blocks. In the pure block high-frequency words were presented with high-frequency word fillers; low-frequency words were presented with low-frequency word fillers; the 24 nonwords, divided in two subsets, were presented with the nonword fillers. There were also four mixed blocks: (i) 12 high frequency words presented with nonword fillers; (ii) 12 low frequency words presented with nonword fillers; (iii) 12 nonwords derived from the high frequency words presented with high frequency word fillers; (iv) 12 nonwords derived from the low frequency words presented with low frequency word fillers. Each participant saw all eight blocks (i.e., four pure and four mixed blocks). The assignment of the experimental sets to the two different block conditions was counterbalanced across participants. The first 8 stimuli in each block were practice-warm-up stimuli, which had similar characteristics with the experimental items and prepared participants for the stimuli to come (Taylor & Lupker, 2001). In each block there were 32 items: 8 practice-warm-up stimuli, 12 experimental stimuli, and 12 fillers. Participants saw either the pure blocks first or the mixed blocks first. The order of the blocks was TABLE 1 Mean characteristics of the stimuli Words Characteristic Length Frequency Bigram frequency N-size Summed neighbourhood frequency

Nonwords

High frequency

Low frequency

High frequency

Low frequency

4.66 2.40 11.01 2.83 2.10

4.75 1.05 10.88 2.33 1.81

4.58 10.92 2.88 2.35

4.70 10.81 2.29 2.11

Note. Lengths are in letters. Word frequency, summed neighbourhood frequency, and bigram frequency values are log transformed.



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randomised, as the stimuli in each block. A brief practice session preceded the experiment.

Apparatus and procedure Participants read aloud the stimuli as rapidly and accurately as possible. Each stimulus was preceded by a 400-ms fixation cross, and remained on the centre of the computer screen until the participant initiated pronunciation, and for a maximum of 800 ms. An interstimulus interval of 1500 ms preceded the presentation of the next fixation cross. A pause separated blocks. Reaction times (RTs) were collected using a microphone connected to the computer. The experimenter noted all mispronunciations.

RESULTS Mispronunciation errors accounted for 2.2% of total data points and were excluded from the analysis of naming RTs. Trials in which the voice key was not triggered (2.0%) or naming latencies exceeded the 800 ms deadline (0.4%) were considered missing data. An analysis of variance assessed the effects of stimulus (word vs. nonword), block (blocked vs. mixed) and their interaction, on both naming latencies and error rates. The mean naming latencies and error percentages are illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, respectively. On reaction times, there was a significant effect of stimulus, with words being named faster than nonwords, F1(1, 39)54.9, pB.0001; F2(1, 94) 20.5, pB.001. There was a main effect of block, with stimuli in blocked condition being named faster than in mixed condition, significant only by items, F1(1, 39)2.5, ns; F2(1, 94)6.3, pB.05. The blockstimulus interaction was significant, F1(1, 39)6.4, pB.05; F2(1, 94)9.27, pB.005,

Figure 1. Mean reaction time to words and nonwords in the list conditions (blocked and mixed).


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Figure 2. Percentages of errors to words and nonwords in the list conditions (blocked and mixed).

with the block effect being significant only for words (Duncan test, pB.005). The lexicality effect was significant through both blocked and mixed conditions. The size of the lexicality effect (Cohen, 1977) was bigger in the blocked condition (d0.97) than in the mixed condition (d0.54). The analysis on errors shows that the effect of stimulus was significant, with words being named more accurately than nonwords, F1(1, 39)22.1, pB.0001; F2(1, 94) 9.8, pB.005. Neither block, F1(1, 39)1.7, ns; F2 B 1, nor the interaction were significant, F1(1, 39)2.7, ns; F2(1, 94)1.2, p.1. Two sets of ANOVAs compared low-frequency words with their nonword controls, and high-frequency words with their matched nonwords respectively (in interaction with block). Mean naming latencies and error percentages are presented in Figures 3 and 4, respectively. Comparing reaction times for the high-frequency stimuli, there were significant effects of lexicality, F1(1, 39)30.4, pB.001, F2(1, 46)11.3, pB .005, and block, by items, F1(1, 39)2.9, ns; F2(1, 46)5.6, pB.05. The

Figure 3. Mean reaction time to high frequency words and corresponding nonwords, and to low frequency words and corresponding nonwords in the list conditions (blocked and mixed).



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Figure 4. Percentages of errors to high frequency words and corresponding nonwords, and to low frequency words and corresponding nonwords in the list conditions (blocked and mixed).

lexicality by block interaction was also significant, F1(1, 39)5.7, pB.05, F2(1, 46)7.9, pB.05. The lexicality effect was significant in both blocked and mixed conditions (35 ms and 16 ms respectively, both pB.05, Duncan’s test), and the interaction was due to the effect of block restricted to word stimuli (pB.001), so that words were read faster in blocked than in mixed condition. On the errors the effect of lexicality was significant by participants, F1(1, 39)12.7, p.001, F2(1, 46)3.1, ns, with words being read more accurately than nonwords. Neither block nor the lexicality by block interaction were significant (all FB1). As for the low-frequency stimuli, there was a significant effect of stimulus on reaction times, F1(1, 39)37.7, pB.001; F2(1, 46)14.9, pB.005, with words being read faster than nonwords. The block and the lexicality by block interaction were not significant, Block: F1 and F2 B1; Interaction: F1(1, 39)1.7, ns; F2(1, 46)1.7, n.s. As for the errors, the effect of stimulus was significant by participants only, F1(1, 39)5.9, pB.05; F2(1, 46) 1.7, ns, with words being pronounced more accurately than nonwords. The effect of block was not significant, F1 B1; F2(1, 46)2.4, ns. The lexicality by block interaction was significant by participants, F1(1, 39)7.4, pB.01.; F2(1, 46)1.7, ns, with low-frequency words being read more accurately than nonwords, but only when presented in a mixed condition (pB.001).

DISCUSSION Our objective here has been to investigate whether and to what extent readers of a shallow orthography, specifically Italian, employ lexical reading despite the regularity of their language and the presence of both words and nonwords in the experimental list. The results are quite straightforward: words which follow a strict oneto-one print to sound conversion and do not need assignment of lexical stress


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thus could in principle be read correctly relying solely on the nonlexical route are nevertheless named faster than matched nonwords, both in pure and mixed (with nonwords) blocks. That is, the presence of nonwords in the list did not eliminate the lexicality effect (see also Kinoshita et al., 2004; Lupker et al., 1997). Not only high-frequency words but also low-frequency words were read faster than matched nonwords, regardless of the list composition, a finding observed also for English regular words (Kinoshita et al., 2004; Lupker et al., 1997). These results suggest that in Italian the lexical route is kept well active also in reading low-frequency words that do not have a strong lexical representation and could be otherwise read by the nonlexical route, particularly when the use of the nonlexical route is encouraged by inserting nonlexical material in the list. As expected on the basis of both the route de-emphasis and the time criterion accounts there was an effect of list context on words, with words in the mixed list being read slower than the words in pure lists. Contrary to words, nonwords were not affected by list manipulation. Nonwords were named as fast in pure blocks as when mixed with words. The latter result would not be expected on the basis of the time criterion account which predicts that, when faster stimuli (words) and slower stimuli (nonwords) are mixed, naming times would homogenise, with the faster stimuli becoming slower and the slower stimuli becoming faster (Chateau & Lupker, 2003; Taylor & Lupker, 2001). However, the finding that nonword reading did not speed up in the context of words does not necessarily constitute evidence against the time criterion account. Specifically, the pattern observed here would be expected if the nonword fillers used in the ‘pure nonword blocks’ were easy enough to be named relatively fast in blocked nonword lists, i.e., if in the ‘pure nonword blocks’ the filler nonwords were named faster than or as fast as the critical nonword stimuli (Raman, Baluch, & Besner, 2004; Taylor & Lupker, 2001). To interpret what is responsible for the absence of the list composition effect on nonword reading, the RT data for the nonword fillers presented in pure nonword blocks were analysed and compared to the RT data for the critical nonword stimuli in pure nonword blocks. The mean RTs of the nonword fillers (525 ms) were as fast as the mean RTs of the critical nonwords (524 ms) in pure nonword blocks. Then filler words were analysed. In pure blocks, they showed mean RTs (486 ms) similar to those of the critical words in pure blocks (492 ms). When mixed with the critical nonwords, filler words were slower (510 ms), similarly to the critical words in mixed blocks (506 ms). Nevertheless, RTs to the critical nonwords did not speed up when mixed with words (523 ms). The results on fillers confirm that the list composition only affected words, with no effect on nonwords. Thus the results do not seem to be consistent with the time criterion account.



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The result on nonwords could be interpreted if one considers how ‘easy’ to be named were the nonwords used in the experiment, as suggested by the orthographic neighbourhood size and summed neighbourhood frequency of the critical nonwords, similar to those of the corresponding words (see Table 1). This may have caused both general and specific activation of words (Reynolds & Besner, 2005) during nonword reading, making it difficult to speed further nonword reading in a context in which the nonwords were mixed with words. However, the ‘easiness’ of the nonwords was not enough to abolish the lexicality effect, not even when nonwords were compared to their corresponding low-frequency words. The present findings add up to the effects of lexical variables in Italian word naming (Barca et al., 2002; Bates, Burani, D’Amico, & Barca, 2001; Burani, Arduino, & Barca, 2007; Burani et al., 2006; Burani, Marcolini, & Stella, 2002; Colombo, 1992; Colombo, Pasini, & Balota, 2006). All these data contrast the view that reading aloud Italian words relies mostly on nonlexical print-to-sound conversion (Fiez, 2000; Frost, 1994; Frost et al., 1987). Rather, these data support the view that the lexical route is never completely shut down but is instead the main route used in naming words, regardless of orthography depth (Besner, 1987; Besner & Chapnik Smith, 1992). Manuscript received February 2007 Revised manuscript received June 2007 First published online December 2007

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APPENDIX A Material used in the experiment High Frequency words BARBA DONNA ERBA FAME FESTA FIUME FRETTA LATTE LIBRO LUNA MARE MONDO NASO NOME PANE PONTE PIETRA RIVA SONNO TESTA TRENO VENTO VINO ZONA

Low Frequency words

Nonwords HF*

Nonwords LF*

BELVA DOSE ERNIA FAMA FIENO FRATE FUNE LISTA LITE LUTTO MOLE MUFFA NORMA NUORA PANNO PERLA PIUMA RATA SORSO TORDO TRAVE VERME VETTA ZUPPA

BARTA DOME ERNA FARTO FEMO FIURO FRISTE LIERE LAFO LURA MAVI MOPRA NAMO NOSTO PAVO PONO PIESE RIMI SOPPO TEPO TRELLO VEBBO VIMA ZOTTA

BESO DOLA ERLO FAPRA FIEMI FRALA FUTA LIPE LITTA LUNTA MOPO MUSTA NOSSA NUOSO PADDA PEBA PIURA RANNO SORRA TORLA TREFO VERTO VENSO ZUDE

* Nonwords derived from the High and Low Frequency words, respectively.