Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:23:52.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remembering “txt” but not “text”: The effect of context and lexicality on memory for text message abbreviations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2015

MICHAEL J. TAT  and
TAMIKO AZUMA
MICHAEL J. TAT
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
TAMIKO AZUMA*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPODENCE Tamiko Azuma, Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-0102. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Text messages often contain abbreviations allowing for an efficient manner to quickly convey content. Although text abbreviations typically contain fewer letters than words, research has demonstrated that they are processed more slowly. Text abbreviations are lexically unique compared to their fully spelled counterparts. This study examined the nature of episodic memory representations for text abbreviations and how top-down contextual information influences the encoding of text abbreviations. In this experiment, participants studied sentences that contained different types of abbreviations: deletions (e.g., tmrw), substitutions (e.g., 2mrw) or “pseudo” abbreviations (e.g., toorow). The sentences were presented within a conversational context or without context. In a recognition memory test, participants saw sentences from the study task that contained either the same abbreviation or a different type of abbreviation. Results revealed that conversational context increased both hits and false recognition rates in the memory test. False recognition rates were generally higher for abbreviation types that shared more surface feature overlap and lower for those that shared less surface feature overlap. The findings suggest text abbreviations have distinct episodic memory representations that incorporate their unique surface feature information and are closely associated to fully spelled lexical memory representations.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 435 - 459
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Berent, I., & Marom, M. (2005). Skeletal structure of printed words: Evidence from the Stroop task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31, 328–338. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.31.2.328Google ScholarPubMed
Berent, I., & Perfetti, C. A. (1995). A rose is a REEZ: The two-cycles model of phonology assembly in reading English. Psychological Review, 102, 146–184. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.102.1.146CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besner, D., Davelaar, E., Alcott, D., & Parry, P. (1984). Wholistic reading of alphabetic print: Evidence from the FDM and the FBI. In Orthographies and reading: Perspectives from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and linguistics (pp. 121–135). London: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., Speybroeck, S., & Vanderelst, D. (2009). Is there room for the BBC in the mental lexicon? On the recognition of acronyms. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 1832–1842. doi:10.1080/17470210802585471CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchwald, A., & Rapp, B. (2006). Consonants and vowels in orthographic representations. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 308–337. doi:10.1080/02643290442000527CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chawarski, M. C., & Sternberg, R. J. (1993). Negative priming in word recognition: A context effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 195–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cleland, A. A., Gaskell, M. G., Quinlan, P. T., & Tamminen, J. (2006). Frequency effects in spoken and visual word recognition: Evidence from dual-task methodologies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 104–119. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.32.1.104Google ScholarPubMed
Cocotas, A. (2013). Kids send a mind boggling number of texts every month. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-number-of-texts-sent-2013-3Google Scholar
Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204–256.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dixon, M., & Kaminska, Z. (1997). Is it misspelled or is it mispelled? The influence of fresh orthographic information on spelling. Reading and Writing, 9, 483–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganushchak, L. Y., Krott, A., Frisson, S., & Meyer, A. S. (2013). Processing words and short message service shortcuts in sentential contexts: An eye movement study. Applied Psycholinguistics, 34, 163–179. doi:10.1017/S0142716411000658CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganushchak, L. Y., Krott, A., & Meyer, A. S. (2010). Electroencephalographic responses to SMS shortcuts. Brain Research, 1348, 120–127. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2010.06.026CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ganushchak, L. Y., Krott, A., & Meyer, A. S. (2012, May). From gr8 to great: Lexical access to SMS shortcuts. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 150. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00150CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldinger, S. D., Kleider, H. M., & Shelley, E. (1999). The marriage of perception and memory: Creating two-way illusions with words and voices. Memory & Cognition, 27, 328–338. doi:10.3758/BF03211416CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graf, P., & Ryan, L. (1990). Transfer-appropriate processing for implicit and explicit memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 978–992. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.16.6.978Google Scholar
Harm, M. W., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2004). Computing the meanings of words in reading: Cooperative division of labor between visual and phonological processes. Psychological Review, 111, 662–720. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.111.3.662CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hintzman, D. L. (1988). Judgments of frequency and recognition memory in a multiple-trace memory model. Psychological Review, 95, 528–551. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.95.4.528CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacoby, L. L., & Hollingshead, A. (1990). Reading student essays may be hazardous to your spelling: Effects of reading incorrectly and correctly spelled words. Canadian Journal of Psychology/Revue Canadienne de Psychologie, 44, 345–358. doi:10.1037/h0084259CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacoby, L. L., & Whitehouse, K. (1989). An illusion of memory: False recognition influenced by unconscious perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118, 126–135. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.118.2.126CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jiang, N., & Forster, K. I. (2001). Cross-language priming asymmetries in lexical decision and episodic recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 32–51. doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2737CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, W., Dark, V. J., & Jacoby, L. L. (1985). Perceptual fluency and recognition judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11, 3–11.Google Scholar
Kutas, M., & Van Petten, C. K. (1994). Psycholinguistics electrified: Event-related brain potential investigations. In Gernsbacher, M. A. (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 83–143). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Laszlo, S., & Federmeier, K. (2007a). Better the DVL you know acronyms reveal the contribution of familiarity to single-word reading. Psychological Science, 18, 122–127.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laszlo, S., & Federmeier, K. D. (2007b). The acronym superiority effect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 1158–1163. doi:10.3758/BF03193106CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laszlo, S., & Federmeier, K. D. (2008). Minding the Ps, queues, and PXQs: Uniformity of semantic processing across multiple stimulus types. Psychophysiology, 45, 458–466. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00636.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, H.-W., Rayner, K., & Pollatsek, A. (2001). The relative contribution of consonants and vowels to word identification during reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 189–205. doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2725CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perea, M., Acha, J., & Carreiras, M. (2009). Eye movements when reading text messaging (txt msgng). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006), 62, 1560–1567. doi:10.1080/17470210902783653CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perry, C., Ziegler, J. C., & Zorzi, M. (2007). Nested incremental modeling in the development of computational theories: The CDP+ model of reading aloud. Psychological Review, 114, 273–315. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.114.2.273CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plaut, D. C., Mcclelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychological Review, 103, 56–115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Potter, M. C., Moryadas, A., Abrams, I., & Noel, A. (1993). Word perception and misperception in context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 3–22. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.19.1.3Google Scholar
Reder, L. M., Donavos, D. K., & Erickson, M. A. (2002). Perceptual match effects in direct tests of memory: The role of contextual fan. Memory & Cognition, 30, 312–323.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schacter, D., Israel, L., & Racine, C. (1999). Suppressing false recognition in younger and older adults: The distinctiveness heuristic. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime: User's guide. Sharpsburg, PA: Psychology Software Incorporated.Google Scholar
Shiffrin, R. M., & Steyvers, M. (1997). A model for recognition memory: REM—Retrieving effectively from memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 145–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tat, M. J., & Azuma, T. (2012). Don't shoot the messnger: memory for misspellings in context. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 41, 215–236. doi:10.1007/s10936-011-9188-9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thurlow, C. (2003). Generation txt? The sociolinguistics of young people's text-messaging. Discourse Analysis Online, 1, 30.Google Scholar
Vergara-Martínez, M., Perea, M., Marín, A., & Carreiras, M. (2011). The processing of consonants and vowels during letter identity and letter position assignment in visual-word recognition: An ERP study. Brain and Language, 118, 105–117. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2010.09.006CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warren, R. M., & Sherman, G. L. (1974). Phonemic restorations based on subsequent context. Perception and Psychophysics, 16, 150–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, R. M., & Warren, R. P. (1970). Auditory illusions and confusions. Scientific American, 223, 30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Westerman, D. L., Miller, J. K., & Lloyd, M. E. (2003). Change in perceptual form attenuates the use of the fluency heuristic in recognition. Memory & Cognition, 31, 619–629.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whittlesea, B. W., Jacoby, L. L., & Girard, K. (1990). Illusions of immediate memory: Evidence of an attributional basis for feelings of familiarity and perceptual quality. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 716–732. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(90)90045-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yonelinas, A. P. (2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 441–517. doi:10.1006/jmla.2002.2864CrossRefGoogle Scholar