Word familiarity and frequency in visual and auditory word recognition

Four experiments investigate printed word frequency and subjective rated familiarity. Words of varied printed frequency and subjective familiarity were presented. A reaction time advantage for high-familiarity and high-frequency words was found in visual (Experiment 1) and auditory (Experiment 2) lexical decision. In Experiments 3 and 4, a cued naming task elicited a naming response after a specified delay after presentation. In Experiment 3, naming of visual words showed a frequency effect with no naming delay. The frequency effect diminished at longer delay intervals. Naming times for auditorily presented words (Experiment 4) showed no frequency effect at any delay. Both naming experiments showed familiarity effects. The relevance of these results are discussed in terms of the role of printed frequency for theories of lexical access, task- and modality-specific effects, and the nature of subjective familiarity.     

Are Arabic numerals processed as pictures in a Stroop interference task?

In a picture-word interference task, picture naming is interfered by an incongruent word, but word naming is hardly hindered by the presence of an incongruent picture. In this study, we investigated whether Arabic digits are processed more like pictures or like words. We report two experiments in which Arabic digits and verbal numerals were confronted in a Stroop task. Arabic digit naming is interfered by the presence of an incongruent verbal numeral, while naming the verbal numeral is not influenced by the presence of an incongruent Arabic digit. In a second experiment, we excluded the hypothesis that the results are due to ignoring the Arabic digits: interferences from an incongruent distracter were similar for both notations in a semantic classification task. It seems that an asemantic conversion for Arabic digits is too slow to influence naming times, and that Arabic digit naming, like picture naming, is semantically mediated.     

Timed picture naming in seven languages

Timed picture naming was compared in seven languages that vary along dimensions known to affect lexical access. Analyses over items focused on factors that determine cross-language universals and cross-language disparities. With regard to universals, number of alternative names had large effects on reaction time within and across languages after target-name agreement was controlled, suggesting inhibitory effects from lexical competitors. For all the languages, word frequency and goodness of depiction had large effects, but objective picture complexity did not. Effects of word structure variables (length, syllable structure, compounding, and initial frication) varied markedly over languages. Strong cross-language correlations were found in naming latencies, frequency, and length. Other-language frequency effects were observed (e.g., Chinese frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times) even after within-language effects were controlled (e.g., Spanish frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times). These surprising cross-language correlations challenge widely held assumptions about the lexical locus of length and frequency effects, suggesting instead that they may (at least in part) reflect familiarity and accessibility at a conceptual level that is shared over languages.     

Word naming and psycholinguistic norms: Chinese

In this article, we present normative data for 2,423 Chinese single-character words. For each word, we report values for the following 15 variables: word frequency, cumulative frequency, homophone density, phonological frequency, age of learning, age of acquisition, number of word formations, number of meanings, number of components, number of strokes, familiarity, concreteness, imageability, regularity, and initial phoneme. To validate the norms, we collected word-naming latencies. Factor analysis and multiple regression analysis show that naming latencies of Chinese single-character words are predicted by frequency, semantics, visual features, and consistency, but not by phonology. These analyses show distinct patterns in word naming between Chinese and alphabetic languages and demonstrate the utility of normative data in the study of nonalphabetic orthographic processing.     

Semantic effects in lexical access: Evidence from single-word naming

Cognitive psychologists have not devoted much attention to semantic and emotional effects early in word recognition, assuming instead that such effects are primarily post-perceptual. Some evidence of such early effects does exist, but it relies exclusively on a less-than-ideal experimental task, the lexical decision task. In the current study, participants heard words over headphones and repeated them into a microphone as quickly as possible (single-word naming). The Danger and Usefulness of word referents were significantly related to naming times, independent of effects such as word length, familiarity, onset characteristics, stress, neighbourhood density, and concreteness. Results are discussed in terms of the adaptive benefit of making quick classifications along these dimensions, and against a backdrop of evidence from several widely divergent areas of research.     

First in,first out: Word learning age and spoken word frequency as predictors of word familiarity and word naming latency

This study is concerned with recent claims that subjective measures of word frequency are more suitable than are standard word frequency counts as indices of actual frequency of word encounter. A multiple regression study is reported, which shows that the major predictor of familiarity ratings is word learning age. Objective measures of spoken and written word frequency made independent contributions to the variance. It is concluded that rated familiarity is not an appropriate substitute for objective frequency measures. A multiple regression study of word naming latency is reported, and shows that rated word learning age is a better predictor of word naming latency than are spoken word frequency, written word frequency, rated familiarity, and other variables. Possible theoretical explanations for age-of-acquisition effects are discussed and it is concluded that early-learned words have a more complete representation in a phonological output lexicon. This conclusion is related to relevant developmental literature.     

Age of acquisition persists as the main factor in picture naming when cumulative word frequency and frequency trajectory are controlled

The aim of this study was to address the effect of objective age of acquisition (AoA) on picture-naming latencies when different measures of frequency (cumulative and adult word frequency) and frequency trajectory are taken into account. A total of 80 Spanish participants named a set of 178 pictures. Several multiple regression analyses assessed the influence of AoA, word frequency, frequency trajectory, object familiarity, name agreement, image agreement, image variability, name length, and orthographic neighbourhood density on naming times. The results revealed that AoA is the main predictor of picture-naming times. Cumulative frequency and adult word frequency (written or spoken) appeared as important factors in picture naming, but frequency trajectory and object familiarity did not. Other significant variables were image agreement, image variability, and neighbourhood density. These results (a) provide additional evidence of the predictive power of AoA in naming times independent of word-frequency and (b) suggest that image variability and neighbourhood density should also be taken into account in models of lexical production.     

Comparing naming, lexical decision, and eye fixation times: Word frequency effects and individual differences

Performance on three different tasks was compared: naming, lexical decision, and reading (with eye fixation times on a target word measured). We examined the word frequency effect for a common set of words for each task and each subject. Naming and reading (particularly gaze duration) yielded similar frequency effects for the target words. The frequency effect found in lexical decision was greater than that found in naming and in eye fixation times. In all tasks, there was a correlation between the frequency effect and average response time. In general, the results suggest that both the naming and the lexical decision tasks yield data about word recognition processes that are consistent with effects found in eye fixations during silent reading.     

Age of acquisition persists as the main factor in picture naming when cumulative word frequency and frequency trajectory are controlled

The aim of this study was to address the effect of objective age of acquisition (AoA) on picture-naming latencies when different measures of frequency (cumulative and adult word frequency) and frequency trajectory are taken into account. A total of 80 Spanish participants named a set of 178 pictures. Several multiple regression analyses assessed the influence of AoA, word frequency, frequency trajectory, object familiarity, name agreement, image agreement, image variability, name length, and orthographic neighbourhood density on naming times. The results revealed that AoA is the main predictor of picture-naming times. Cumulative frequency and adult word frequency (written or spoken) appeared as important factors in picture naming, but frequency trajectory and object familiarity did not. Other significant variables were image agreement, image variability, and neighbourhood density. These results (a) provide additional evidence of the predictive power of AoA in naming times independent of word-frequency and (b) suggest that image variability and neighbourhood density should also be taken into account in models of lexical production.     

Aphasic naming in Spanish: predictors and errors

Sixteen Spanish aphasic patients named drawings of objects on three occasions. Multiple regression analyses were carried out on the naming accuracy scores. For the patient group as a whole, naming was affected by visual complexity, object familiarity, age of acquisition, and word frequency. The combination of variables predicted naming accuracy in 15 of the 16 individual patients. Age of acquisition, word frequency, and object familiarity predicted performance in the greatest number of patients, while visual complexity, imageability, animacy, and length all affected performance in at least two patients. High proportions of semantic and phonological errors to particular objects were associated with objects having early learned names while high proportions of no-response errors were associated with low familiarity and low visual complexity. It is suggested that visual complexity and object familiarity affect the ease of object recognition while word frequency affects name retrieval. Age of acquisition may affect both stages, accounting for its influence in patients with a range of different patterns of disorder.     

Visual word recognition of single-syllable words

Speeded visual word naming and lexical decision performance are reported for 2428 words for young adults and healthy older adults. Hierarchical regression techniques were used to investigate the unique predictive variance of phonological features in the onsets, lexical variables (e.g., measures of consistency, frequency, familiarity, neighborhood size, and length), and semantic variables (e.g. imageahility and semantic connectivity). The influence of most variables was highly task dependent, with the results shedding light on recent empirical controversies in the available word recognition literature. Semantic-level variables accounted for unique variance in both speeded naming and lexical decision performance, level with the latter task producing the largest semantic-level effects. Discussion focuses on the utility of large-scale regression studies in providing a complementary approach to the standard factorial designs to investigate visual word recognition.     

影响图画命名时间的因素

实验共测量了311张图片的H值、命名一致性百分数、概念一致性百分数、表象一致性、熟悉性、视觉复杂性、词长和图片命名的时间,主要探索影响图片命名潜伏期的因素,结果发现概念一致性、熟悉性、表象一致性、词频是影响图片命名时间的主要因素。并尝试建立了概念一致性、熟悉性、表象一致性和词频对图片命名时间的回归方程,其预测能力为55.5%。根据图片的命名时间对命名的难易程度进行了分级,希望能对利用图片作为实验材料的认知实验提供有价值的信息     

Determinants of picture naming times in Icelandic

Numerous studies have found that word frequency has a significant effect on the time it takes to name an object or read a word. Recently, claims have been made that this frequency effect is perhaps more correctly interpreted as an age of acquisition effect. This paper reports an experiment in which naming times in Icelandic for 175 stimuli from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set were determined. A multiple regression analysis of naming times against a number of independent factors showed that objective age of acquisition was the strongest predictor of naming time, with familiarity and name agreement also showing a significant effect. The effect of word frequency was, however, not significant. Possible reasons for this are discussed.     

Orthographic structure versus morphological structure: principles of lexical organization in a given language

Most models of visual word recognition in alphabetic orthographies assume that words are lexically organized according to orthographic similarity. Support for this is provided by form-priming experiments that demonstrate robust facilitation when primes and targets share similar sequences of letters. The authors examined form-orthographic priming effects in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Hebrew and Arabic have an alphabetic writing system but a Semitic morphological structure. Hebrew morphemic units are composed of noncontiguous phonemic (and letter) sequences in a given word. Results demonstrate that form-priming effects in Hebrew or Arabic are unreliable, whereas morphological priming effects with minimal letter overlap are robust. Hebrew bilingual subjects, by contrast, showed robust form-priming effects with English material, suggesting that Semitic words are lexically organized by morphological rather than orthographic principles. The authors conclude that morphology can constrain lexical organization even in alphabetic orthographies and that visual processing of words is first determined by morphological characteristics.     

Age-of-acquisition and frequency effects in speeded word naming

An experiment was conducted to assess the importance of age-of-acquisition and frequency in a speeded word naming task, where participants were instructed to read aloud words before they disappeared from the computer screen. Under such speeded naming instructions, reading latencies were over 100ms (or 20%) faster than in "standard" (or immediate) word naming. There were clear effects of word frequency and age-of-acquisition under speeded naming. Compared to standard immediate naming, the age-of-acquisition effect was larger, with early-acquired words being speeded up more than late-acquired words, which is interpreted in terms of speeded naming reducing the contribution of sublexical processing to word naming times.     

How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times, and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7–44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5–17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to 0.2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye–mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts.     

What's in a name? access to information from people's names

Abstract

The processing of people's names is contrasted with face recognition and word recognition. The effects of the familiarity of initial and surnames and frequency of surnames (the number of people with the same surname) were investigated in several tasks. It was found that the effects of name familiarity and surname frequency were analogous to the effects of word frequency in tasks which did not require access to memory for individuals (a nationality decision and naming latency). In tasks which do require access to memory for individuals (familiarity decision and a semantic classification), the effect of surname frequency was analogous to the effect of distinctive-ness in face recognition. The results are discussed in terms of a functional model of name processing in which name recognition units mediate between the output of word recognition units and access to identity-specific semantics.     

Asymmetries in the processing of Arabic digits and number words

Numbers can be represented as Arabic digits ("6") or as number words ("six"). The present study investigated potential processing differences between the two notational formats. In view of the previous finding (e.g., Potter & Faulconer, 1975) that objects are named slower, but semantically categorized faster, than corresponding words, it was investigated whether a similar interaction between stimulus format and task could be obtained with numbers. Experiment 1 established that number words were named faster than corresponding digits, but only if the two notation formats were presented in separate experimental blocks. Experiment 2 contrasted naming with a numerical magnitude judgment task and demonstrated an interaction between notation and task, with slower naming but faster magnitude judgment latencies for digits than for number words. These findings suggest that processing of the two notation formats is asymmetric, with digits gaining rapid access to numerical magnitude representations, but slower access to lexical codes, and the reverse for number words.