Visual-feature and response components in a picture-word interference task with beginning and skilled readers

JOURNAL

OF EXPERIMENTAL

CHILD

PSYCHOLOGY

24, 440-460

(1977)

Visual-Feature and Response Components Picture-Word Interference Task with Beginning and Skilled Readers

in a

CARLA J. POSNANSKY AND KEITH RAYNER Urfitvrsity

of’ Rochester

A series of four experiments is reported in which reaction times for naming line drawings were analyzed as a function of the similarity of the print superimposed on the drawings to the printed label for the drawing. This effect was studied as a function of grade level (ages 6. 8, and 11 years) and, hence, reading experience. The studies were designed to determine more precisely the characteristics of the stage of visual feature analysis of word identification and to examine response competition factors in this interference task. Results indicated that a combination of end letters and word shape was important for word identification and that response articulation was a significant distinct interference component in this task.

Recently, a number of experiments have been reported which demonstrate that children are able to access word meaning after visual analysis of the printed word is complete without resorting to phonological recoding (Rosinski, Golinkoff, & Kukish, 1975; Golinkoff & Rosinski, 1976; Ehri, 1976). The evidence that these investigators have provided is based on an interesting task which is a modification of the Stroop (1935) word-color interference task. In this modified Stroop task, subjects were asked to name pictures on a sheet of paper. In one condition, the label of the picture was printed in the center of the picture, while in another condition, there was a mismatch between the picture and the label printed on it t Stroop condition). In a control condition, pronounceable nonsense words were printed on the picture. Rosinski et al. (1975) found that it took subThe order of authors was decided by a toss of a coin. This was a completely collaborative effort. The authors appreciate the assistance of Karen Bernstein, Donard Dwyer, Sharon Press, and Carol Weingold in collecting the data. We wish to thank Sister Roberta Tierney and the staff of St. Anne’s. Good Shepherd, Guardian Angels, and St. Pius the Tenth schools for their cooperation. Finally, we wish to express appreciation to Richard Rosinski for his helpful criticism of earlier drafts of this manuscript. This research was supported by Grant BNS76-05017 from the National Science Foundation and Grant EY 01319 from the National Eye Institute. Requests for reprints should be sent to either Carla Posnansky or Keith Rayner at the Center for Development, Learning, and Instruction. University of Rochester, Rochester. New York 14627. This is publication No. 4 of that Center. 440 CopyrIght ’ 1977 by Academx Press, Inc All right5 of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN 0022-0%5

PICTURE-WORD

INTERFERENCE

341

jects longer to name the pictures on a sheet when the mismatch occurred than when there was a match. The nonsense word condition was intermediate between the other two conditions. This latter finding enabled Rosinski et al. to separate components of the interference effect. If interference had been entirely the result of input competition, the nonsense word and the Stroop condition should not have differed since both increased processing load. If the interference effect had been solely the result of response competition, responses in the nonsense word condition should have taken longer than those in the Stroop condition because the unfamiliarity of the nonsense words would make them harder to read. If, however, the interference effect had a semantic component, the nonsense word condition should have been intermediate between the label and Stroop conditions. The results of Rosinski et al. indicated that this was the case. In addition, since the semantic component of the interference effect was consistent in second-grade children as well as in sixth-grade children and adults, Rosinski et al. concluded that the mapping of the printed word to meaning must take place early in the process of learning to read and that the extraction of meaning from unrelated printed words may be an automatic process even in young readers. Ehri (1976) criticized the Rosinski et al. (1975) procedure because of its failure to determine the magnitude of the interference effect by including a condition which ascertained whether labeling facilitated or interfered with simple picture naming. Ehri compared conditions in which pictures occurred by themselves, with their labels printed on them. or with Stroop words printed on them. She found that labels did, indeed, facilitate picture naming and that pictures without labels were named faster than pictures with mismatches. While we believe that the modified Stroop task is interesting and has the potential to reveal interesting data about word recognition and reading, it is also true that the experiments reported so far have used rather gross dependent variables (total time taken to name a sheet of pictures). Thus, while these and other studies have demonstrated the existence of visual, phonemic, and semantic stages in the word identification process, the precise nature of these stages is not well understood. The present studies used an extension of the Rosinski et al. interference technique with tachistoscopic exposures and reaction time measures in order to examine more precisely the nature of processing within each of these stages. For example, the visual stage of processing has been conceptualized in a number of ways. Smith (1971) has proposed a model in which word identification is independent of letter identification. According to Smith, readers store criteria1 sets of features about words in longterm memory. Thus, a specific set of features is associated with a particular word category and each word category has a number of criteria1 sets that are mapped onto a particular word. The letter strings IZOIISP and

442

POSNANSKY

AND

RAYNER

are each recognized by a different set of criteria1 features stored with the meaning of the word house. According to Smith, readers normally proceed by identifying the criteria1 sets of features, and information from long-term memory enables the reader to identify the word immediately. The reader only resorts to letter identification when he encounters a difficult or unfamiliar word (and hence one for which he had not stored criteria1 sets of features in long-term memory). On the other hand, other models dealing with the visual stage of word identification (e.g., Massaro, 1975) postulate the importance of featural information from the letters of words. Experiment 1 examined the importance of a number of visual cues which may be processed en route to word identification in order to differentiate between models such as those proposed by Smith and by Massaro. Readers of varying ages and, hence. varying degrees of reading ability participated in order to determine whether the distinction between these two models holds across a developmental range. HOUSE

EXPERIMENT

1

Method

Twelve first-, third-, and sixth-grade children from the parochial school district in Rochester, New York, with mean ages of 6 years 7 months, 8 years 5 months, and 11 years 5 months, respectively, participated in Experiment 1. Subjects were selected for participation by their classroom teachers. There were an equal number of girls and boys at each grade level. All of the children had normal or corrected 20/20 vision and all of them were reading at grade level or above according to teachers’ judgments and standardized reading tests given within their school district. The 12 adult subjects were undergraduate students at the University of Rochester who participated in order to fulfill requirements for an introductory psychology course. Materials and apparatus. Sixty black and white line drawings were taken from the Modern Curriculum Phonics Workbook (Elwell, Murray, & Kucia, 1970). All pictures had three-, four-, or five-letter labels which were frequent words in children’s literature (Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971). An equal number of each length were selected. Pictures were mounted on 4 x 6-in. index cards for tachistoscopic exposure. Each picture was mounted on six different cards in order to create six experimental conditions when print was superimposed on the pictures. Experimental conditions throughout the series of studies reported here are referred to as either word (W) or nonword (NW) conditions. In addition, the presence of a specific feature in an NW condition is indicated by the name of that feature following the designation NW. The absence of a specified characteristic is denoted by a bar above the name of the characteristic. Subjects.

PICTURE-

FIG.

443

WORD INTERFERENCE

1. Examples of stimulus materials in Experiment

1.

The conditions of Experiment 1 are shown in Fig. 1. In condition W-Label, the label and picture matched. In condition NW-ShapeLetters, end letters of the label were maintained and middle letters were replaced with visually confusable letters (Bouma, 1971), thus maintaining the overall shape of the label. Ascenders were replaced by ascenders and descenders were replaced by descenders. In condition NW-ShapeLetters, end letters from a label were again maintained, but middle letters were replaced with non-visually confusable letters, thus altering the word shape of the label since ascenders, for example, were replaced with descenders or with letters that did not extend above or below the line of print. In condition NW-ShapeLetters, every letter of the label was replaced with a visually confusable letter, thus maintaining the overall word outline while changing the end letters. In condition NW-ShapeLetters, every letter in the label was replaced by a non-visually confusable letter, thus changing both word shape and end letters. Condition W-Stroop was the Stroop condition where a word of matched frequency and length was printed on the picture. A list of experimental pictures and their corresponding Stroop words is found in Table 1. The four nonword conditions (NWShapeLetters, NW-ShapeLetters, NW-ShapeLetters and NW ShapeLetters) represented a continuum in terms of the amount of information preserved from the actual label. Thus, in condition NW-ShapeLetters, the change was essentially a lexical change and visual characteristics were similar to the label. In conditions NW-ShapeLetters and NW-ShapeLetters, there were two changes: lexical and shape (NW-ShapeLetters) or lexical and end letters

444

POSNANSKY

AND TABLE

Prcr URN STIMULI Experiments APPLE BAG BALL BED BELL BOOK BOX BREAD CAMEL CAN CAR c,4’r

CHAIR COAT cow CROWN CUP DESK DOG DRESS DRUM DUCK FISH GHOST GLASS GOAT GUN HAT HEART HOE

beach leg ring fly rock fish hat shore bacon day arm son steel army lie spear egg nest box cabin cart bark body juice paper lawn rod gas plant rye

1

AUD CORRESPONDING

1 and 2 HORN HORSE KEY KITE LAMP LEAF MOUSE NET PAIL PAN PEAR PIANO PIE PIG RADIO SAW SHEEP SHOE SLED SNAIL STAR STOOL SUN SWING TENT TOP TRAIN TREE WHALE WITCH

RAYNER

STROOP WORDY

Experiment wing river hat bull crop meal graph bag mule tea roll motor cup LOO hoard air track pool tire cable noun basin top uncle horn sea women

BABY DOOR DRUM FISH HORN HORSE KITE LAMP SOCK TRUCK

3 soil fork cart body wing river bull crop hook metal

Experiment BIRD BOWL CHAIR LEAF LION NAIL SAIL SEAL SOAP STOOL I-OES TRAIN

4 wood chop steel meal clay soup barn bike mill basin gate women

face

cream creek

(NW-ShapeLetters). In condition NW-ShapeLetters, there were three changes from the label: lexical, shape, and end letters. In addition to the stimulus cards, a visual mask made up of superimposed Xs, Zs. and OS was also prepared. The mask covered the area of visual angle occupied by the pictures. A Gerbrands three-channel tachistoscope (Model T-3B-1C with lamp drivers. Model 400-3) was used to present the stimuli. The three channels of the tachistoscope were equated at approximately 2 mL. Viewing distance was 86.36 cm and viewing was binocular. A digital timer accurate to 1 msec began with the onset of the stimulus presentation and was used to record reaction time for picture naming. The digital timer was stopped when the subject spoke into a voice-activated microphone located just below chin level.

PICTURE-WORD

INTERFERENCE

445

In addition to the cards which were prepared for tachistoscopic exposure, sets of 10 pictures within the same experimental condition were mounted on sheets of paper so that naming times for a page of pictures representing an experimental condition could be recorded under nontachistoscopic conditions. These sheets were similar to those used by Rosinski et al. (1975). Procedure. Subjects were tested individually. Prior to presenting the stimulus cards in the tachistoscope, subjects participated in two warmup tasks. In Task 1, subjects were shown sheets of paper that contained all 60 line drawings with no print. In order to ensure that they were correctly identifying all pictures, subjects were simply asked to name them. In cases where the subjects mislabeled the picture, the experimenter corrected the subject and retested that item later during the task. In Task 2, subjects were shown pictures with labels in the tachistoscope for exposures ranging from 300 to 100 msec. Pictures shown in Task 2 were unrelated to the experimental pictures just described, and the longest exposures occurred on the earliest trials. The purpose of Task 2 was to familiarize the subject with tachistoscopic exposures and to ensure that both words and print could be seen with IOO-msec exposures. After experience with Task 2, the subjects who reported that they could not see print on the pictures were eliminated. Following both warm-up tasks, subjects had 60 trials in the actual experiment. For each trial, subjects were asked to fixate on a cross in the center of the visual field and acknowledge that they were ready for the stimulus presentation. A lOO-msec stimulus presentation then occurred. Stimulus presentation was followed by the presentation of the mask for 300 msec. In the stimulus presentation, the printed word on the picture was slightly above where the fixation cross had been. The print was centered horizontally with regard to the fixation point and a five-letter word occupied less than 1” of visual angle. The six alternative types of stimuli were presented in blocks of 10 pictures each with the order of block presentation counterbalanced in Latin-square fashion. Each picture appeared in each condition across subjects within a grade x sex cell. Subjects were asked to na.me the pictures as quickly as possible and the amount of time needed to name the picture successfully was recorded. After the 60 tachistoscopic trials were completed, subjects named 10 pictures in stimulus conditions W-Label, NW-ShapeLetters, NWShapeLetters, and W-Stroop when the 10 pictures within a condition were printed on one sheet of paper. Conditions NW-ShapeLetters and NWShapeLetters were chosen to represent the nonword conditions, since they represented the extremes of our nonword continuum. The dependent variable here was the total time needed to complete the naming of all 10 pictures on a page. Times were recorded with a stopwatch. Once again, the ordering of conditions was counterbalanced in Latin-square fashion. A warm-up page which included a mixture of conditions among pictures not

446

POSNANSKYANDRAYNER

otherwise occurring in the experiment was given to each subject previous to this nontachistoscopic phase of the experiment. Results Results for tachistoscopic and nontachistoscopic data are reported separately. The probability of Type 1 error for all effects reported is equal to or less than .05. Tachistoscopic presentations. A 4 (grade level) x 2 (sex) x 6 (experimental condition) mixed analysis of variance was performed on the mean reaction times for successfully naming pictures within a block of 10 presentations. There was a highly significant main effect of experimental condition, F(5,200) = 26.81. The mean reaction times for each condition, along with the results from a Newman-Keuls analysis on these means, are found in Table 2. The fastest mean naming times were found in the W-Label condition and these times were faster than those in Conditions NW-ShapeLetters and the NW-ShapeLetters condition. NW-ShapeLetters did not differ from each other, and all nonword conditions had shorter mean naming times than did the W-Stroop condition. The main effects of both grade level and sex also reached significance, F(3,40) = 11.62 and F( 1,30) = 4.89, respectively. Mean reaction times decreased with increasing grade level, as seen in Table 2, and females had faster naming times (z = 840 msec) than did males (k = 900 msec). Neither of the between-subjects variables interacted with experimental condition, nor did they interact with each other. Examination of error data revealed so few errors that no trends could be discerned. TABLE? MEAN

SCORES

BASED

ON

RT (IN

TACHISTOSCOPIC

MILLISECONDS)

STIMULUS

TO 100.MSEC

EXPOSURES

Condition”

NW-

WLabel (e.g.. apple1 Grade 1 Grade 3 Grade 6 Adults x Newman-Keuls W-Label

ShapeLetters ,e.g.. aqqtej

974.4 912.1 833.0 767.9 R71.9

NWShapeLetters ,e.g., azzme,

1074.6 973. I 836.6 828.4 92x.2

NWShapeLetters le.&. oqqtc)

1052.0 1052.6 898 ? x72.1 968.7

NWShapeLetter\ (e.g.. kzzmft

1058.8 1029.4 901.6 876 I Y66.5

1088.0 1078.6 929.9 954.x 1012 x

Wstroop (e.g.. how-) 1140.6 II67 1 981.6 1005.0 1073.8

test NW-ShapeLetter

a W. word condition:

NW.

NW-ShapeLetters

NW-ShapeLetters

nonword

conditmn:

overbar

mdicates

altered

NW-ShapeLetters

feature

W-stroop

4 1061.7 1035.6 896.R 884 I

PICTURE-WORD

447

INTERFERENCE

Nontachistoscopic presentations. A 4 (grade level) x 2 (sex) x 4 (experimental condition: W-Label, NW-ShapeLetters, NW-ShapeLetters, and W-Stroop) mixed analysis of variance was performed on the total time needed to name all the pictures within an experimental condition. There was a significant main effect of experimental condition, F(3,120) = 81.81, and the means can be seen in Table 3. The results of a Newman-Keuls test, which can also be seen in Table 3, indicated that the two nonword conditions (NW-ShapeLetters and NW-ShapeLetters) did not differ from each other but resulted in longer naming times than did condition W-Label and faster naming times than condition W-Stroop. The main effects of both grade level and sex also reached significance, F(3,40) = 32.62 and F(l,40) = 5.97, respectively. Again, mean naming times decreased with increasing grade level, as can be seen in Table 3, and females were faster (k = 14.3 set) than males (x = 16.5 set). There was also a significant Grade Level x Experimental Condition interaction, F(3,120) = 4.35. Sixty-five percent of this variance was accounted for by the fact that the third-grade children showed a larger difference between the W-Label and W-Stroop conditions than did the other subjects. No other interactions reached significance. Discwsion

The nontachistoscopic phase of Experiment 1 clearly replicated the findings of Rosinski et al. (1975). Across all grade levels in the experiment, the label condition resulted in overall faster naming times than TABLE MEAN

SCORES BASED ON RT (IN SECONDS)

3 FOR NONTACHISTOSCOPIC

EXPOSURE

Condition” WLabel (e.g., apple) Grade Grade Grade Adults 3,

1 3 6

Newman-Keuls

u W, word

NWShapeLetters (e.g., aqqte)

15.8 9.9 8.5 7.2 10.4

20.0 16.7 11.6 10.3 14.7

NWShapeLetters (e.g., kzzmf) 23.5 18.2 11.8 10.2 15.9

Wstroop (e.g., house) 25.9 25.9 17.4 13.0 20.6

21.3 17.7 12.4 10.2

test W-Label

NW-ShapeLetters

condition;

NW,

nonword

NW-ShapeLetters condition:

overbar

W-Stroop indicates

altered

x

feature.

448

POSNANSKY

AND

RAYNER

the Stroop condition. The two nonword conditions were intermediate and did not differ from each other, although they represented the extremes of our nonword continuum. Importantly, however, with lOO-msec tachistoscopic exposures, there were clear differences among all the nonword conditions. First, it should be noted that all the nonword conditions were intermediate between the label and the Stroop condition, indicating that the interference effect had a significant semantic component. When both end letters and word shape of the label were maintained (condition NW-ShapeLetters). reaction times were faster than when only one of these characteristics was maintained (condition NW-ShapeLetters or NW-ShapeLetters). When both the shape and the end letters of the label were changed (condition NW-ShapeLetters), reaction times were longest of all the nonword conditions. This pattern of results then provides greater information about the visual stage of processing than could be obtained from the nontachistoscopic data alone. The more featural information that a nonword had in common with the picture label, the faster was the naming time. The finding that nonwords and words which held featural information in common resulted in similar types of performance has also been found in a delayed matching-to-sample task (Rayner & Hagelberg, 1975; Rayner. 1976) and when subjects were asked to read mutilated text (Rayner & Kaiser, 1975). The findings of Experiment I are thus in contradiction to a model such as that proposed by Smith (1971), which suggests that word identification is independent of letter identification. Both beginning and skilled readers named pictures faster when the superimposed print preserved featural information about some of the letters of the picture label and when specific letters from the picture label were preserved than when such features were not preserved. According to Smith’s model, there should be no differences among the nonword conditions since the subject would not have stored criteria1 sets for the nonwords. Smith’s model might be extended to include the possibility that all nonword conditions would result in slower naming times than both the W-Label and WStroop conditions since these latter conditions involved real words that have criteria1 feature sets stored in long-term memory, while nonword analysis must include matching criteria1 sets letter by letter. Our data, however, point to the importance of the featural information from letters since nonwords preserving some featural information of the letters in the picture label resulted in faster naming times (i.e., less interference was generated) than the W-Stroop condition. Although another extension of Smith’s model might postulate that partial matches (e.g., NWShapeLetter) to criteria1 sets would result in faster naming times than total mismatches (e.g., NW-ShapeLetters), such an extension seems to reduce to nothing more than postulating intermediate stages of featural analysis in which letters or letter features are analyzed.

PICTURE-WORD

INTERFERENCE

449

Although the Grade Level x Experimental Condition interaction did not reach significance, it is also the case that the first-grade data were somewhat more variable. Within the first-grade data, mean naming times within all nonword conditions were almost alike. Although the results from the tachistoscopic phase of Experiment 1 extend the results obtained by Rosinski et al. (197.5). two further aspects of the data warrant investigation. First, the results of Experiment 1 may have been somewhat influenced by certain phonemic factors. Phonemic factors were not systematically varied in Experiment 1. Second, the same general criticism that Ehri (1976) made of the Rosinski et al. study can be made of this study. Thus, whether or not a picture’s label actually facilitated the naming of the picture was not ascertained in Experiment 1. In order to conclude that featural information from the printed word is being used en route to meaning in this task, it must first be demonstrated that the label for a picture, per se, facilitates the naming of that picture. This effect must also be examined across grade levels since the degree of facilitation (or interference) found may vary across grades, thereby affecting our conclusions from Experiment 1. While Experiment 2 was designed to address this later criticism, Experiments 3 and 4 were designed to vary phonemic factors systematically and to determine their effect on the interference generated here. In Experiment 2 subjects were asked to name pictures under three conditions: (1) pictures without labels or any other print (Pit-Only), pictures with labels (W-Label), and (3) pictures within a Stroop condition ( W-Stroop). EXPERIMENT

2

Method Subjects. Twelve first-, third-, and sixth-grade children from the parochial school district in Rochester, New York, with mean ages of 6 years 7 months, 8 years 3 months, and 11 years 8 months, respectively, participated in Experiment 2. There were an equal number of boys and girls at each grade level. Children were chosen as in Experiment 1, but no subjects had participated in the previous experiment. Twelve adults from the Rochester community also served as subjects. Materials and apparatus. Twenty-four pictures from Experiment 1 were randomly selected for use in Experiment 2. Each picture was mounted on three different index cards like those from Experiment 1. Three experimental conditions could then be created: pictures without print (PicOnly), pictures with labels (W-Label), and pictures with Stroop words (W-Stroop) (see Table 1). Other materials (e.g., visual mask) and apparatus were identical to those in Experiment 1.

4.50

POSNANSKY

AND

RAYNER

Pracedure. The tachistoscopic trials of Experiment 2 proceeded in a manner identical to that of Experiment 1 after identical warm-up tasks. The three alternative types of stimuli were presented in blocks of eight pictures each with the order of block presentation counterbalanced in Latin-square fashion. Each picture appeared in each condition across subjects within a grade x sex cell. Results

A 4 (grade level) x 2 (sex) x 3 (experimental conditions) mixed analysis of variance was performed on the mean reaction times for successfully naming pictures within a block of eight presentations. There was a highly significant main effect of experimental condition, F(2,80) = 63.16. The mean reaction times were 842.8, 888.9. and 1101.3 msec for the W-Label, Pit-Only, and W-Stroop conditions, respectively. A NewmanKeuls analysis revealed significant differences among all three means. Although it is easily observed that the difference between the pictureonly and the W-Stroop conditions was much larger than the difference between the W-Label and the picture-only condition, it should be noted that the latter difference was a very consistent one across subjects. The main effect of grade level also reached significance, F(3.40) = 10.49, indicating that first- and third-grade subjects (x = 1093.1 and 1001.6) differed from sixth-grade and adult subjects (2 = 810.5 and 872.2). The main effect of sex failed to reach significance and no variables interacted (all F < 1). No analysis was performed on the error data because only 19 errors were made across all subjects and conditions. Discussion

The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that presenting the label for a picture facilitated the naming of that picture across all grade levels. This finding is in agreement with Ehri’s (1976) findings and its occurrence in the present task clarifies the findings of Experiment 1. Thus, the finding that featural information from the letters of the printed word was processed en route to the semantic identification is more clearly evaluated now that we have demonstrated that the picture label which contains all featural and semantic information does indeed facilitate rather than interfere with the naming of the picture for both young (first-grade) and more skilled (sixth-grade) readers. Although the different subjects used in Experiments 1 and 2 make it difficult to compare directly picture-only naming times with naming times for nonword conditions, such a comparison has been made with adult subjects by Rayner and Posnansky (in press). Nonwords which preserved many of the features of the picture label resulted in faster naming times than pictures with no superimposed print.

PICTURE-WORD

451

INTERFERENCE

Experiment 1 was concerned exclusively with visual processing. It is also of interest to separate more precisely the semantic and response (or articulatory) components of the interference generated within this paradigm and to examine this separation developmentally. To the degree that superimposed print is phonemically recoded during processing, letter strings which do not preserve the phonemic characteristics of the picture label should result in commands to the articulatory system which interfere with the commands for picture naming. While the extent to which the interference generated here has a semantic base over and above its articulatory response base may be constant across ages, the amount of interference due to articulatory competition may not be (Rosinski et al., 1975). The importance of phonemic recoding factors in the word identification process has been discussed by several investigators (e.g., Meyer, Schvaneveldt, & Ruddy, 1974; Gough, 1972). Thus, Experiments 3 and 4 manipulated both the semantic- and phonemic-match qualities of print superimposed on pictures by utilizing homophones and nonword soundalikes to the picture labels. EXPERIMENT

3

Method Subjects. Sixteen first-, third-, and sixth-grade children from the parochial school district in Rochester, New York, with mean ages of 6

FJG.

2. Examples

of stimulus

materials

in Experiment

3

452

POSNANSKYANDRAYNER

years 7 months, 8 years 3 months, and 11 years 8 months, respectively, participated in Experiment 3. Children were chosen in the same manner as in previous experiments, but no child had participated previously. There were an equal number of boys and girls in each grade level. Eight adults from the University of Rochester community also served as subjects. Materials utld apparatus. Eighty black and white line drawings were taken from the previously cited source. Sixty-four pictures had four-letter labels and 16 had five-letter labels which were frequent words in children’s literature (Carroll et al.. 1971). Pictures were once again mounted on 4 x 6-in. index cards for tachistoscopic exposure. Eight experimental conditions were created with each picture appearing in only one experimental condition. The conditions are seen in Fig. 2. Two of the conditions, W-Label and W-Stroop, were identical to those used in the first two experiments (see Table 1). The remaining six conditions varied in the extent to which they phonemically matched the label. In two of these conditions (W-ShapeSound and W-ShapeSound), homophones were used. The former condition had the same overall outline or shape as the label, while the latter did not. Four nonword conditions were also used in the study: NW-ShapeSound (which preserved the label’s shape and pronunciation), NW-ShapeSound (which preserved pronunication only), NW-ShapeSound (which preserved shape but not pronunciation), and NW-ShapeSound (which changed both the shape and pronunciation). The latter two conditions did represent pronounceable nonwords. The apparatus was identical to that used in Experiments 1 and 2. In addition to the cards which were prepared for tachistoscopic presentation, pictures within experimental conditions W-Label, W-ShapeSound, W-ShapeSound, NW-ShapeSound, and W-Stroop were mounted on sheets of paper so that naming times for a page of pictures representing an experimental condition could be recorded under nontachistoscopic conditions. This procedure was like that used in Experiment 1. Procedure. The tachistoscopic trials of Experiment 3 proceeded in a manner identical to those of Experiments 1 and 2 after identical warm-up tasks. The eight experimental conditions were presented in blocks of 10 pictures each with the order of block presentation counterbalanced in Latin-square fashion. The nontachistoscopic trials of Experiment 3 were also identical to those of Experiment 1. Order of conditions was counterbalanced as well as possible across subjects.

Taciristoscopic

(experimental

A 3 (grade level: 1,3,6) x 2 (sex) x 8 mixed analysis of variance was performed on

presetztatims.

condition)

PICTURE-WORD

453

INTERFERENCE

reaction times for successfully naming each picture. In the previous two experiments, means for each experimental condition were based on data across several samples of pictures. This was not the case in Experiment 3. Thus, here pictures were treated as a random variable nested within experimental condition (Clark, 1973) and F’,,,;,, values are reported where appropriate. There was a highly significant main effect of experimental condition, F’,r,i,r (7,113) = 7.59. The mean reaction times for each condition along with the results from a Newman-Keuls analysis of these means are found in Table 4. In addition to the means for children, mean reaction times for eight adult subjects also included in Table 4. The W-Label condition resulted in the fastest reaction times while conditions preserving the phonemic characteristics of the label were generally faster than those conditions in which phonemic characteristics were not preserved. An analysis of variance performed on reaction times within conditions where only the phonemic characteristics of the label were preserved did, however, indicate that the NW conditions resulted in faster reaction times (% = 962.6 msec) than the W conditions (x = 1056.2). E“,,,i,,(4,68) = 22.33. Also in this analysis, conditions which preserved the shape of the label resulted in faster reaction times (x = 992.7) than conditions which did not (8 = 1026.0), F’,,li,, (2,94) = 5.53. The effect of grade level also reached significance, F(2,42) = 18.27. Mean reaction times decreased with increasing grade level, as seen in Table 4. None of the interactions reached significance. Nontaclzistoscopi~. presentations. A 3 (grade level) x 2 (sex) x 5 (exTABLE

4

SCORES BASED ON RT (IN MILLISECONDS) TACHISTOSCOPIC S I IMULUS EXPOSURES

MEAN

TO 100-MSEC

Condition”

W-

Grade 1 Grade 3 Grade h x AdUk\

W-Label

WLabel

ShapeSOUlld

wShapeSWd

NWShapeSOUlld

NWShape SOUlld

1121.3 X22.8 x33.4 926. I 759 0

1388.1 1024 7 978.4 11304 YO3.9

1437.5 1089 2 1019.1 118?.0 933.’

1300.6 957.0 !a07 5 ln5?.n X09.X

1277.7 100x ? 924.5 1070 I XhY.X

NW-ShapeSound

” W. wxd

condition:

-

NW-ShapeSound

NW.

nonword

W-ShapeSound

condition:

overhar

W-ShapeSound

indwates

altered

NWShapeSound 1371.0 1?4O.X 1139.3 1250.4 107?.4

NWShape Sound 1418.5 1704.7 1111.Y 1245.0 1027.4

NW-ShapeSound

feature

Wwstroop 1417.3 1197.3 I IX.3 1270.3 108h 5

NW-ShapeSound

x 1341 h IOhR I 1013.8 932 8

W-Slroop

454

POSNANSKYANDRAYNER

perimental condition) analysis of variance was performed on the total time needed to name all the pictures within an experimental condition. Results from this analysis should be viewed with reservation since naming times for individual items could not be obtained, therefore making the calculation of F’,,gi,r impossible. Some of the results of this analysis are included here, however, only in support of trends seen elsewhere in the present series of experiments. There was a significant effect of experimental condition, F(4,168) = 65.77. with a Newman-Keuls test indicating that subjects named pictures in the W-Label condition (x = 7.21 set) faster than in W-ShapeSound (x = 9.48) and W-ShapeSound (.% = 10.77) conditions, which both preserved pronunciation and did not differ from each other. These two conditions were. in turn faster than the NW-ShapeSound condition (2 = 13.04). which did not preserve pronunciation and which was quicker than the W-Stroop condition (2 = 15.63). The pattern of results was fairly consistent across grade levels although the interaction of Condition x Grade reached significance, F(2,42) = 5.11, generally indicating larger differences among conditions at younger ages. Discussiotl The results of Experiment 3 confirm the existence of both semantic and phonemic response components of the interference with picture naming generated in the present paradigm since conditions preserving the sound of the picture label resulted in faster naming times than those that did not. The ordering out of experimental conditions along the W-Label to W-Stroop continuum was revealing with respect to the separation of these interference components (see Table 4). The fastest naming times occurred in nonword conditions where neither semantic interference nor interference from competing response articulation could be expected. Thus, in these conditions, superimposed print did not have semantic content and the pronunciation response to such orthographic strings would result in commands to the articulatory mechanisms which match the commands made for picture naming. Conditions which preserved the articulation of the picture label but provided semantic content not matching the picture resulted in the next fastest naming times, while conditions in which pronunciation responses would result in articulatory competition without significant semantic interference had the next fastest naming times. Naming times were slowest in the W-Stroop condition where both phonemic and semantic factors were interference components. In addition, it can be seen here that the increment of interference added by superimposing a competing phonemic letter string was of considerable magnitude for all grade levels. Further evidence for pinpointing this component of interference as oc-

PICTURE-

WORD

INTERFERENCE

455

curring at the time responses are made comes from the nontachistoscopic data wherein preserving the phonemic characteristics of the picture label resulted in faster naming times than failing to do so. In Experiment 1, interference due to visual feature mismatches was obtained only with limited stimulus exposures, suggesting that such effects took place early in processing. Alternatively, the response locus and longer duration of the effect of phonemic characteristics are supported here by the comparability of response pattern in the nontachistoscopic and tachistoscopic phases of Experiment 3. The results of Experiment 3 were also consistent with the results of Experiment 1 in indicating that the overall shape of the label was important in identifying the picture. It should be noted that in Experiment 3 the initial letter of the picture’s label was preserved only when phonemic features were preserved. Since a number of studies (e.g., Rayner & Hagelberg, 1975: Rayner, 1976) have demonstrated that the initial letter of a word is an important cue in word identification, evaluation of the effects of preserving these two types of characteristics (initial letter and pronunciation) should be unconfounded. In English, it is difficult to preserve pronunciation without preserving the initial letter of a word. Therefore, in Experiment 4, all nonwords preserved the initial letter of the picture label so that the effects of preserving phonemic characteristics could be evaluated against non-phonemic-preserving nonword conditions which also preserved initial letters. Finally, the use of only nonword intermediate conditions between the label and the Stroop condition permitted the elimination of a nested design in which variability among conditions was concomitant with the different sets of items occurring in those conditions. EXPERIMENT

4

Method Subjects. Twelve first-, third-, and sixth-grade children from the parochial school district in Rochester, New York, with mean ages of 6 years 7 months, 8 years 3 months, and 11 years 8 months, respectively, participated in Experiment 4. None of the subjects had participated in previous experiments. There were an equal number of boys and girls at each grade level, and children were chosen as in the previous experiments. Material and apparatus. Twelve black and white line drawings were taken from the previously cited source. Eight of the pictures had fourletter labels while the remaining pictures had five-letter labels which were frequent words in children’s literature (Carroll et al., 1971). Each picture was mounted on six 4 x 6-in. index cards for tachistoscopic exposure. Six experimental conditions were then created with each picture appearing in all six conditions for each subject. These conditions are seen in Fig. 3. Four

456

POSNANSKY

FIG.

3. Examples

of stimulus

AND

RAYNER

materials

in Experiment

4.

of the conditions, W-Label, W-Stroop, NW-ShapeSound, and NWShapeSound, were identical to those used in Experiment 3. The remaining two conditions were as follows: NW-ShapeSound, which was a nonword preserving the overall shape of the label as well as its initial letter, and NW-ShapeSound, which was a nonword preserving only the label’s initial letter. Appropriate picture and Stroop word correspondences are found in Table 1. The apparatus and other materials were identical to those used previously. Procedure. Trials here proceeded in a manner identical to that of the previous studies. The six experimental conditions were presented in blocks of 12 trials each with the order of block presentation counterbalanced in Latin-square fashion. Results

ad

Discussiorl

A 3 (grade level) x 2 (sex) x 6 (experimental condition) analysis of variance was performed on reaction times for successfully naming each picture. Since all pictures appeared in all conditions within each subject, both pictures and subjects were treated as random variables factorially crossed (Clark, 1973) and quasi-F ratios (denoted F’) are reported where appropriate. There was a highly significant effect of experimental condition, F’(2.68) = 21.02. The mean reaction times for each condition along with the results from a Newman-Keuls analysis of these means are found in Table 5. As in Experiment 3, the W-Label condition resulted

PICTURE-WORD TABLE MEAN

SCORES

BASED

457

INTERFERENCE

ON

RT

TACHISTOSCOPIC

5

(IN

T O 100.MSFC

MII.LISECOYDS)

STIMULUS

EXPOSURES

Condition” WLabel Grade I Gradi: 3 Grade h x

NWShapeSound

100h.3 Xhh.? 661 r x44.7

Newman-Keuls

NWShapeSound

NWShapeSound

NWShapeSound

11130 Y3? 9 731 x 93.')

1?14.Y 961.9 727 2

l?Yh 3 l?YY x IO?0 x

9hx.n

l?ns.;’

i(115.7 943.4 690.7 883.3

1051.2 941.9 711.4 YOI.5

Wstroop

.u llIh3 9x9 5 1512

test

W-Label

” W. word condition:

NW-ShapeSounJ

NW,

nonword

NW-ShapeSound

cond~t~wt:

overbar

NWmShapeSoond

indicates

altered

NW-ShapeSound

W-stroop

feature

in the fastest naming times, while conditions preserving the phonemic characteristics of the label resulted in faster naming times than those conditions which did not. This finding is in agreement with those of Experiment 3. However, when the phonemic characteristics of the label were maintained, there was no indication that preserving the overall shape of the label had any effect on naming time. Thus, Experiments 3 and 4 provided evidence that the phonemic characteristics of the picture label lessened the amount of interference with picture naming when the stimulus materials were presented at IOO-msec exposures. The results concerning the importance of maintaining the overall shape of the label when the phonemic characteristics are preserved were not as clear. However, with regard to the importance of preserving the shape of the label, it should be noted that the NW-ShapeSound condition in Experiments 3 and 4 was not directly comparable to the NW-ShapeLetter condition in Experiment 1. The latter condition generally preserved more of the visual distinctive features of the picture label in their correct spatial locations than did the former condition and phonemic factors were not systematically manipulated in Experiment 1. Stimuli in Experiments 3 and 4 were designed to test the importance of preserving phonemic characteristics and did so at the expense of visual characteristics. The effect of grade level also reached significance, F(2,30) = 21.09. Mean reaction times decreased with increasing grade level, as seen in Table 5. None of the variable interactions reached significance. GENERAL

DISCUSSION

The present series of studies has extended the analysis of interference effects found in a modified Stroop paradigm for picture naming. The task involved the presentation of pictures with superimposed print for naming

458

POSNANSKYANDRAYNER

wherein the degree to which such print corresponded to the appropriate picture label was varied along visual and phonemic dimensions. The previous use of such a task separated three possible components of the interference with picture naming: the visual, articulatory, and semantic components (Rosinski et al., 1975: Golinkoff& Rosinski, 1976: Ehri, 1976). The use of tachistoscopic exposures within this paradigm permitted more detailed assessments of these visual and articulatory components. In Experiment 1. the nonwords which preserved both the shape and the end letters of the picture label resulted in faster naming times than those nonwords which did not preserve these types of information. This finding suggests that these particular features are processed en route to semantic meaning. It is of further interest to note that differences between the nonword conditions included here emerged only in the tachistoscopic phase of Experiment 1 where exposures were limited to 100-msec durations so that early processing was examined. Thus, the use of rapid tachistoscopic exposures provided the opportunity to examine the nature of processing during the initial stage of visual feature analysis in more detail. The findings of Experiment I were in contradiction to a model of word identification which suggests that word identification is independent of letter identification (Smith. 1971). According to Smith, specific sets of features are associated with a particular word category and each category has a number of criteria1 sets that are mapped onto a particular word in long-term memory. In essence, word identification is based on (1) features of a word in total and (2) language redundancies so that letter features need not be analyzed. The specific differences found among nonword conditions in Experiment 1 contradicted this conceptualization. The results from Experiments 3 and 4 provided evidence for both semantic and articulatory (response) components of interference in the present task. In general, the degree of interference caused by W-Stroop where both semantic and articulatory interference could be expected was the greatest of all conditions. In addition, conditions which preserved the phonemic characteristics of the picture label resulted in faster naming times than those that did not, and the comparability of results from the tachistoscopic and nontachistoscopic phases of Experiment 3 provided some further evidence that such interference was occurring at the time of responding. Thus. the interference component visible here was the result of the phonemic recoding of superimposed print so that commands made to the articulatory mechanism based on the print did not match those made for picture naming. The extent to which such response competition contributed to the total amount of interference in this task was comparable across the age (and reading experience) levels included. Based on a previous report by Rosinski et al. (197.51, it had been expected that the degree of interference from competing articulations would be greater for

PICTURE-

WORD

INTERFERENCE

459

younger and less skilled readers. Our tachistoscopic data indicate that this was not the case. However, our nontachistoscopic data are in agreement with previous reports in finding Grade x Condition interactions. Such interactions may be partially due to the use of strategies for overcoming interference by older children in nontachistoscopic situations where picture-naming trials are not discrete trials. The only difference among grade levels found with detailed examination of the tachistoscopic data was that first-grade children did not name pictures faster in nonword conditions preserving more visual features than in conditions preserving fewer visual features (Experiment 1). The finding that beginning readers were not able to take advantage of some visual cues has been found previously (Rayner, 1976) and may be explained by the fact that beginning readers spend more time analyzing the features of each individual letter, while older, more skilled readers are able to analyze visual features from more than one letter at a time. Given the rather brief duration of the exposure in the experiments reported here, perhaps the beginning readers processed the first letter and upon encountering the next letters knew that there was a problem since the printed stimulus did not match the picture. Thus, all of the nonword intermediate conditions would be equally troublesome to the beginning reader. On the other hand, more skilled readers were able to abstract visual feature information from a number of letter positions simultaneously. In this case, the conditions violating the word shape and initial letter would be more confusing than the condition which did not. In essence, the argument is that beginning readers are at the level of analyzing each letter and matching a phonemic representation, while the skilled readers are able to abstract more automatically visual information from a number of letters simultaneously (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). Furthermore, our failure to find any differences across grade levels when phonemic characteristics of the picture label were preserved is support for this type of argument, as is the fact that the Stroop effect was clearly present at all grade levels. REFERENCES Bouma.

H. Visual recognition of isolated lower-case letters. Vision Reseurch. 1971, 11. 459-474. Carroll. J. B.. Davis. P., & Richman. B. Word ,frequency hook. New York: American Heritage, 1971. Clark, H. H. The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research. Joumol o.f Verbal Learning ard Verbal Behul,ior. 1973. 12, 335-359. Ehri. L. C. Do words really interfere in naming pictures’? Child Developrnc~rfr. 1976. 47, m-505. Elwell. C., Murray, R., & Kucia, M. Phonics +cwrXbooX seric,s. Cleveland, Ohio: Modern Curriculum Press. 1970. Golinkoff. R. M., & Rosinski, R. R. Decoding. semantic processing and reading comprehension skill. Child Drvelopmertt, 1976, 47. 252-258.

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AND

RAYNER

Gough,

P. B. One second of reading. In J. F. Kavanagh & I. G. Mattingly (Eds.). Lungttug~ hy ear and by CJW. Cambridge. Mass.: M.I.T. Press. 1972. LaBerge. D., & Samuels S. J. Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Ps@zo/o,~~, 1974. 6, 293-323. Massaro. D. W. Uticlersfundin~ larrguuge. New York: Academic Press. 1975. Meyer, D. E., Schvaneveldt. R. W., & Ruddy, M. G. Function of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word recognition. Mernnuy ur~cl Cq~itiolr, 1974. 2. 309-321. Rayner, K. Developmental changes in word recognition strategies. Jourml of Educutiotml P.sycho1og.v. 1976, 68, 323-329. Rayner. K.. & Hagelberg. E. M. Word recognition cues for beginning and skilled readers. Jorrmul qf Expc~rimrtltui Child Ps~cho1o.c.q. 1975. 20, 444-455. Rayner. K., & Kaiser, J. S. Reading mutilated text. .lo~rnul ~!f’E~lrrc-rrtio~ul P.\~(./&cJ~~. 1975. 67. 301-306. Rayner. K.. & Posnanshy. C. J. Stages of processing in word identification. fo~~rttui c!f E.\pc~ri~nrntul P.ryc~ho/o~g~: Genertrl. in press. Rosinski, R. R.. Golinkoff. R. M.. & Kukish. K. Automatic semantic processing in a picture-word interference task. Child Drrvlopmerlt, 1975, 46, 247-253. Smith, F. Undrrstunclirzg remding. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971. Stroop. J. R. Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journul r~fExprrir~zerm~/ Psycho/o,y.v, 1935, 18. 643-662. RECEIVEI):

June 29. 1976; REVISED:

November

23. 1976.