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Typing pictures: Linguistic processing cascades into finger movements
Michele Scaltritti1, Barbara Arfé2, Mark Torrance3
1Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova,Via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy; Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, LPC, Marseille, France.
Abstract:
The present study investigated the effect of psycholinguistic variables on measures of response latency and mean interkeystroke interval in a typewritten picture naming task, with the aim to outline the functional organization of the stages of cognitive processing and response execution associated with typewritten word production. Onset latencies were modulated by lexical and semantic variables traditionally linked to lexical retrieval, such as word frequency, age of acquisition, and naming agreement. Orthographic variables, both at the lexical and sublexical level, appear to influence just within-word interkeystroke intervals, suggesting that orthographic information may play a relevant role in controlling actual response execution. Lexical-semantic variables also influenced speed of execution. This points towards cascaded flow of activation between stages of lexical access and response execution.
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