Tasks

The entire study was divided into four tasks, each of them inducing a different level of processing visual/orthographic (task 1), phonological/phonetic (task 2), phonological/lexical (task 3), and semantic (task 4). In each task, the experimental paradigm was a mental oddball task in which subjects had to mentally count the number of target stimuli delivered randomly among nontarget stimuli. In task 1 (“size” task), the targets were large-sized stimuli presented among standard-sized stimuli. The stimuli were words, pseudowords, nonwords, strings of alphanumeric symbols, and strings of forms. In task 2 (“rhyme” task), the targets were words or pseudowords rhyming with the word □□□□□□□□□with or-thographically possible endings being “aille,” “ail,” “aye,” or “aï.” Nontarget stimuli were words, pseudowords, and nonwords. Task 3 included three lexical decision types: in LD-1 the targets were words interspersed among illegal nonwords; in LD-2 the targets were words interspersed among pseudowords; in LD-3 the targets were pseudowords interspersed among words. In task 4 (the semantic-decision task), subjects had to count abstract words interspersed among concrete words, pseudowords, and nonwords.