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Phonological Features Mediate Object-Label Retrieval and Word Recognition in the Visual World Paradigm

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Attention and Vision in Language Processing

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Abstract

While there are numerous studies that investigate the amount of phonological detail associated with toddlers’ lexical representations of words and their sensitivity to mispronunciations of these words, research has only recently begun to address the mechanisms guiding the use of this detail during word recognition. The current chapter reviews the literature on experiments using the visual world paradigm to assess infant word recognition, in particular, the amount of attention infants pay to phonological detail in word recognition. We further present data from a novel study using a visual priming paradigm to assess the extent to which toddlers retrieve sub-phonemic detail during lexical access. The results suggest that both the retrieval of an object’s label and toddlers’ recognition of a word involve activation of not only phonemic but also sub-segmental information associated with the lexical representation of this word. We therefore conclude that lexical access in toddlers is mediated by sub-phonemic information.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

    Nicole Altvater-Mackensen

  2. University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Nivedita Mani

Authors
  1. Nicole Altvater-Mackensen
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  2. Nivedita Mani
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicole Altvater-Mackensen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

    Ramesh Kumar Mishra

  2. Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Narayanan Srinivasan

  3. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Falk Huettig

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Altvater-Mackensen, N., Mani, N. (2015). Phonological Features Mediate Object-Label Retrieval and Word Recognition in the Visual World Paradigm. In: Mishra, R., Srinivasan, N., Huettig, F. (eds) Attention and Vision in Language Processing. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2443-3_2

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