title: Bedding down new words: Sleep promotes the emergence of lexical competition in visual word recognition.
abstract: Lexical competition processes are widely viewed as the hallmark of visual word recognition, but little is known about the factors that promote their emergence. This study examined for the first time whether sleep may play a role in inducing these effects. A group of 27 participants learned novel written words, such as banara, at 8 am and were tested on their learning at 8 pm the same day (AM group), while 29 participants learned the words at 8 pm and were tested at 8 am the following day (PM group). Both groups were retested after 24 hours. Using a semantic categorization task, we showed that lexical competition effects, as indexed by slowed responses to existing neighbor words such as banana, emerged 12 h later in the PM group who had slept after learning but not in the AM group. After 24 h the competition effects were evident in both groups. These findings have important implications for theories of orthographic learning and broader neurobiological models of memory consolidation.
authors: Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia. huachen.wang@mq.edu.au.
authors: Hua-Chen
authors: HC
authors: Wang
authors: Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia.
authors: Greg
authors: G
authors: Savage
authors: Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York, UK.
authors: M Gareth
authors: MG
authors: Gaskell
authors: Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia.
authors: Tamara
authors: T
authors: Paulin
authors: Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia.
authors: Serje
authors: S
authors: Robidoux
authors: Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia.
authors: Anne
authors: A
authors: Castles
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D012890:Sleep; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Lexical competition; Lexical consolidation; Sleep; Visual word recognition; Word learning