Abstract
Two experiments are reported that examine the influence of a given word's
ortllographic neighbours (orthographically similar words) on the recognition
and pronunciation of that word. In Experiment 1 (lexical decision) neighbourhood
frequency as opposed to stimulus-word frequency was shown to have a
strollg influen ce on recognition Iatencies and errors. Words with at least olle
higher.frequency lIeighbour took longer to recognile and resulted in more errors
than words with no higher-frequency neighbours. Increasing the number of
higher.fre(luency neighbours, however, was shown not to increase interference
further. Interference was also shown to be independent of the position of letter
change between the stimulus word and its higher-frequency neighbour. In Experiment
2 (word naming), on the other hand, neighbourhood frequency had
little effect on pronu llciation latencies to words but these latencies did correlate
with total number of orthographic neighbours (independently of their frequency
relative to the stimulus word). The results are discussed in terms of processes
of activation and competition operating in visual word recognition.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 92-101 |
| Journal | IPO Annual Progress Report |
| Volume | 23 |
| Publication status | Published - 1988 |