Orthographic neighbors and visual word recognition

Two lexical decision experiments, using words that were selected and closely matched on several criteria associated with lexical access, provide evidence of facilitatory effects of orthographic neighborhood size and no significant evidence of inhibitory effects of orthographic neighborhood frequency on lexical access. The words used in Experiment 1 had few neighbors that were higher in frequency. In Experiment 2, the words employed had several neighbors that were higher in frequency. Both experiments showed that words possessing few neighbors evoked slower responses than those possessing many neighbors. Also, in both experiments, neighborhood size effects occurred even though words from large neighborhoods had more potentially interfering higher-frequency neighbors than words from small neighborhoods.     

Orthographic neighborhood effects in lexical decision: the effects of nonword orthographic neighborhood size

The effects of large neighborhoods (neighborhood size) and of higher frequency neighbors (neighborhood frequency) were examined as a function of nonword neighborhood size in lexical decision tasks. According to the multiple read-out model (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996), neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects should vary systematically as a function of nonword neighborhood size. In these experiments, the nonword context was more extensively manipulated than in previous studies, providing a more complete test of the model's predictions. In addition, simulations were conducted examining the model's ability to account for the facilitatory neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency effects observed in these experiments. The results suggest that the model overestimates the role of inhibition in the orthographic processing of English words.     

Phonological neighbors speed visual word processing: evidence from multiple tasks

The author investigated the role of phonological neighborhood on visual word recognition. Using a lexical decision task, the author showed in Experiment 1 that words with large phonological neighborhoods were processed more rapidly than those with smaller phonological neighborhoods. This facilitative effect was obtained even when the nonword fillers had the same number of phonological neighbors as the words. This finding indicates that phonological neighbors speed processing within the phonological system. In the next 2 experiments, this claim was further tested using the naming and semantic categorization tasks. In both experiments, the effect of phonological neighborhood was found to be facilitative. The results across all 3 experiments indicate that phonology is central to visual word recognition and that phonological neighborhood provides a reliable measure of phonological processing.     

Word-frequency and phonological-neighborhood effects on verbal short-term memory

Immediate memory span and maximal articulation rate were assessed for word sets differing in frequency, word-neighborhood size, and average word-neighborhood frequency. Memory span was greater for high- than low-frequency words, greater for words from large than small phonological neighborhoods, and greater for words from high- than low-frequency phonological neighborhoods. Maximal articulation rate was also facilitated by word frequency, phonological-neighborhood size, and neighborhood frequency. In a final study all 3 lexical variables were found to influence the recall outcome for individual words. These effects of phonological-word neighborhood on memory performance suggest that phonological information in long-term memory plays an active role in recall in short-term-memory tasks, and they present a challenge to current theories of short-term memory.     

The influence of visualization of orthography on the recognition of written words]

This paper reviews the main research that has been conducted on the role of orthographic neighbourhood in visual word recognition. We focus here on the traditionally defined neighbourhood, that is corresponding to the set of words of the same length sharing all but one letter with the stimulus. Two major theoretical frameworks, namely the activation verification and the interactive activation models, assume that orthographic neighbours are activated when a written word is presented. Predictions formulated by both models for words and pseudowords on the effects of neighbourhood size (N), neighbourhood frequency (NF), and neighbourhood distribution (P), are examined in order to assess the plausibility of serial versus interactive processes. Findings from 27 empirical studies including more than 80 experiments suggest that neighbourhood effects depend on the neighbourhood indexes (N, NF, and P), on the particular tasks (lexical decision, naming, semantic categorization, perceptual identification, and reading), and on the languages (English, French, Spanish, and Dutch) that are used. The results for words can be summarized as follows: (1) In the lexical decision task, the N effect is facilitatory. The NF effect is rather inhibitory, particularly in French and Spanish experiments. The P effect is rather inhibitory in English studies, whereas the P effect for higher frequency neighbours is facilitatory in French. (2) In the perceptual identification task with a single identification response, N and NF effects are inhibitory whatever the language. (3) In the naming task, N and NF effects are facilitatory whatever the language. (4) In the semantic categorization task, an interaction effect between N and NF is found in both English and Spanish. (5) In eye movement studies, the NF effect is inhibitory in both English and French. The issue of lexical versus task-specific processes underlying neighbourhood effects in lexical identification tasks is also examined. On the whole, facilitatory N effects are usually attributed to nonlexical processes of the lexical decision task and of the naming task, whereas inhibitory neighbourhood frequency effects are usually attributed to lexical processes, at least in lexical-decision experiments and in eye-movement studies on normal reading. The distribution of higher frequency neighbours which is found to have a facilitatory effect on French words in lexical-decision experiments can be attributed to lexical processes in the interactive activation framework. The theoretical implications of the data are discussed in light of the original activation verification and interactive activation models and in recently extended versions of these models. We conclude that the lexical inhibition hypothesis which is central in the interactive activation framework is the most appropriate to account for the role of orthographic neighbourhoods in visual word recognition.     

Priming word recognition with orthographic neighbors: effects of relative prime-target frequency

Four lexical decision experiments were performed with an orthographic priming paradigm in which test words were preceded by orthographically related or unrelated prime words. When prime words were presented for 350 ms without a mask, it was observed that primes that are lower frequency orthographic neighbors of the target interfered with target processing relative to an unrelated condition. When primes were higher frequency neighbors of the target, no interference or facilitation was observed. On the other hand, with briefly presented masked primes, interference was observed with higher frequency prime words. Finally, facilitatory effects in masked repetition priming were obtained with both high- and low-frequency prime-target pairs. The results are interpreted in terms of activation and selection processes operating in visual word recognition.     

A compilation of 800 word neighborhoods by frequency

A number of inconsistencies are evident in the literature examining word-neighborhood size and frequency effects. One reason for the inconsistency may be that there are no standardized materials and criteria used in the different studies. Each experimenter has devised his or her word neighborhoods using different criteria for neighborhood size and frequency. The purpose of the present study was to develop a standardized set of word neighborhoods. Eight hundred orthographic neighborhoods were constructed with 4- and 5-letter words. The word lists were devised relative to the key elements that have been identified in the literature: (1) target-word frequency, (2) number of words in the neighborhood, (3) number of words higher in frequency than the target word, (4) number of letter positions contributing to the neighborhood, and (5) summation of the frequency of all neighbors (providing a standard metric for high- vs. low-frequency neighborhoods).     

Phonographic neighbors,not orthographic neighbors,determine word naming latencies

The orthographic neighborhood size (N) of a word—the number of words that can be formed from that word by replacing one letter with another in its place—has been found to have facilitatory effects in word naming. The orthographic neighborhood hypothesis attributes this facilitation to interactive effects. A phonographic neighborhood hypothesis, in contrast, attributes the effect to lexical print-sound conversion. According to the phonographic neighborhood hypothesis, phonographic neighbors (words differing in one letter and one phoneme, e.g., stove and stone) should facilitate naming, and other orthographic neighbors (e.g., stove and shove) should not. The predictions of these two hypotheses are tested. Unique facilitatory phonographic N effects were found in four sets of word naming mega-study data, along with an absence of facilitatory orthographic N effects. These results implicate print-sound conversion—based on consistent phonology—in neighborhood effects rather than word-letter feedback.     

Observing neighborhood effects without neighbors

With a new metric called phonological Levenshtein distance (PLD20), the present study explores the effects of phonological similarity and word frequency on spoken word recognition, using polysyllabic words that have neither phonological nor orthographic neighbors, as defined by neighborhood density (the N-metric). Inhibitory effects of PLD20 were observed for these lexical hermits: Close-PLD20 words were recognized more slowly than distant PLD20 words, indicating lexical competition. Importantly, these inhibitory effects were found only for low- (not high-) frequency words, in line with previous findings that phonetically related primes inhibit recognition of low-frequency words. These results indicate that the properties of PLD20--a continuous measure of word-form similarity--make it a promising new metric for quantifying phonological distinctiveness in spoken word recognition research.     

The facilitative influence of phonological similarity and neighborhood frequency in speech production in younger and older adults

A tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) elicitation task and a picture-naming task were used to examine the role of neighborhood frequency as well as word frequency and neighborhood density in speech production. As predicted for the younger adults in Experiment 1, more TOT states were elicited for words with low word frequency and with sparse neighborhoods. Contrary to predictions, neighborhood frequency did not significantly influence retrieval of the target word. For the older adults in Experiment 2, however, more TOT states were elicited for words with low neighborhood frequency. Furthermore, in Experiment 3, pictures with high neighborhood frequency were named more quickly and accurately than pictures with low neighborhood frequency. These results show that the number of neighbors and the frequency of those neighbors influence lexical retrieval in speech production. The facilitative nature of these factors is more parsimoniously accounted for by an interactive model rather than by a strictly feedforward model of speech production.     

The dynamics of lexical competition during spoken word recognition

The sounds that make up spoken words are heard in a series and must be mapped rapidly onto words in memory because their elements, unlike those of visual words, cannot simultaneously exist or persist in time. Although theories agree that the dynamics of spoken word recognition are important, they differ in how they treat the nature of the competitor set-precisely which words are activated as an auditory word form unfolds in real time. This study used eye tracking to measure the impact over time of word frequency and 2 partially overlapping competitor set definitions: onset density and neighborhood density. Time course measures revealed early and continuous effects of frequency (facilitatory) and on set based similarity (inhibitory). Neighborhood density appears to have early facilitatory effects and late inhibitory effects. The late inhibitory effects are due to differences in the temporal distribution of similarity within neighborhoods. The early facilitatory effects are due to subphonemic cues that inform the listener about word length before the entire word is heard. The results support a new conception of lexical competition neighborhoods in which recognition occurs against a background of activated competitors that changes over time based on fine-grained goodness-of-fit and competition dynamics.     

Is there a neighborhood frequency effect in English? Evidence from reading and lexical decision

What is the effect of a word's higher frequency neighbors on its identification time? According to activation-based models of word identification (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996; J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart, 1981), words with higher frequency neighbors will be processed more slowly than words without higher frequency neighbors because of the lexical competition mechanism embodied in these models. Although a critical prediction of these models, this inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect has been elusive in studies that have used English stimuli. In the present experiments, the effect of higher frequency neighbors was examined in the lexical decision task and when participants were reading sentences while their eye movements were monitored. Results suggest that higher frequency neighbors have little, if any, effect on the identification of English words. The implications for activation-based models of word identification are discussed.     

An examination of word frequency and neighborhood density in the development of spoken-word recognition

In this study, the effects of word-frequency and phonological similarity relations in the development of spoken-word recognition were examined. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults listened to increasingly longer segments of high- and low-frequency monosyllabic words with many or few word neighbors that sounded similar (neighborhood density). Older children and adults required less of the acoustic-phonetic information to recognize words with few neighbors and low-frequency words than did younger children. Adults recognized high-frequency words with few neighbors on the basis of less input than did all three of the children’s groups. All subjects showed a higher proportion of different-word guesses for words with many versus few neighbors. A frequency × neighborhood density interaction revealed that recognition is facilitated for high-frequency words with few versus many neighbors; the opposite was found for low-frequency words. Results are placed within a developmental framework on the emergence of the phoneme as a unit in perceptual processing.     

The neighborhood distribution effect in visual word recognition: words with single and twin neighbors

Lexical-decision tasks were used to test the role of neighborhood distribution in visual word recognition. Predictions based on the interactive activation model were generated by running simulations. The data were compared for words with 2 higher frequency neighbors that differed in their neighborhood distribution. The neighbors were "single" when they did not share a neighborhood relationship (e.g., neighbors of flanc: flanc-blanc) or "twin" when they shared a neighborhood relationship (e.g., neighbors of firme: ferme-forme). Results show a facilitatory neighborhood distribution effect on words in Experiments 1 (easy pseudowords) and 3 (difficult pseudowords and easy pseudowords) and on pseudowords in Experiment 2. These data can be accounted for in terms of lexical inhibition in the interactive activation framework.     

The effects of "neighborhood size" in reading and lexical decision.

The effects of neighborhood size ("N")--the number of words differing from a target word by exactly 1 letter (i.e., "neighbors")--on word identification was assessed in 3 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, the frequency of the highest frequency neighbor was equated, and N had opposite effects in lexical decision and reading. In Experiment 1, a larger N facilitated lexical decision judgments, whereas in Experiment 2, a larger N had an inhibitory effect on reading sentences that contained the words of Experiment 1. Moreover, a significant inhibitory effect in Experiment 2 that was due to a larger N appeared on gaze duration on the target word, and there was no hint of facilitation on the measures of reading that tap the earliest processing of a word. In Experiment 3, the number of higher frequency neighbors was equated for the high-N and low-N words, and a larger N caused target words to be skipped significantly more and produced inhibitory effects later in reading, some of which were plausibly due to misidentification of the target word when skipped. Regression analyses indicated that, in reading, increasing the number of higher frequency neighbors had a clear inhibitory effect on word identification and that increasing the number of lower frequency neighbors may have a weak facilitative effect on word identification.     

Neighborhood effects in visual word recognition: Facilitatory or inhibitory?

In five experiments, in which subjects were to identify a target word as it was gradually clarified, we manipulated the target's frequency of occurrence in the language and its neighborhood size—the number of words that can be constructed from a target word by changing one letter, while preserving letter position. In Experiments 1–4, visual identification performance to screen-fragmented words was measured. In Experiments 1 and 2, we used the ascending method of limits, whereas Experiments 3 and 4 presented a fixed-level fragment. In Experiment 1, there was no relation between overall accuracy and neighborhood size for-words-between three and six letters in length. However, more errors of commission (guesses) were made for high-neighborhood words and more errors of omission (blanks) were made for low-neighborhood words. Letter errors within guesses occurred at serial positions having many neighbors, and these positions were also likely to contain consonants rather than vowels. In Experiment 2, a smallfacilitatory effect of neighborhood size on bothhigh- and low-frequency words was found. In contrast, in Experiments 3 and 4, using the same set of words,inhibitory effects of neighborhood size, but only for low-frequency words, were found. Experiment 5, using a speeded identification task, showed results parallel to those of Experiments 3 and 4. We suggest that whether neighborhood effects are facilitatory or inhibitory depends on whether feedback allows subjects to disconfirm initial hypotheses that the target is a high-frequency neighbor.     

Do postonset segments define a lexical neighborhood?

Previous research has demonstrated that the number and frequency of lexical neighbors affects the perception of individual sounds within a nonword in a phoneme identification task. In the present research, the issue of what items should be considered part of a word's neighborhood was explored. These experiments, in which both lexical decision and phoneme identification tasks were used, demonstrate that lexical neighborhood effects are not limited to words that match the target item syllable initially (the cohort). Words that differ from a target only in their first phoneme influence the process of lexical access. This argues against the notion that word onsets serve a unique or special purpose in word recognition.     

The effect of phonological neighborhood density on eye movements during reading

Recent research has indicated that phonological neighbors speed processing in a variety of isolated word recognition tasks. Nevertheless, as these tasks do not represent how we normally read, it is not clear if phonological neighborhood has an effect on the reading of sentences for meaning. In the research reported here, we evaluated whether phonological neighborhood density influences reading of target words embedded in sentences. The eye movement data clearly revealed that phonological neighborhood facilitated reading. This was evidenced by shorter fixations for words with large neighborhoods relative to words with small neighborhoods. These results are important in indicating that phonology is a crucial component of reading and that it affects early lexical processing.     

Orthographic neighborhood and concreteness effects in the lexical decision task

The experiment reported here investigated the sensitivity of concreteness effects to orthographic neighborhood density and frequency in the visual lexical decision task. The concreteness effect was replicated with a sample of concrete and abstract words that were not matched for orthographic neighborhood features and in which concrete words turned out to have a higher neighborhood density than abstract words. No consistent effect of concreteness was found with a sample of concrete and abstract words matched for orthographic neighborhood density and frequency and having fewer neighbors and higher-frequency neighbors than the words of the first sample. Post hoc analyses of the results showed that orthographic neighborhood density was not a nuisance variable producing a spurious effect of concreteness but, instead, that the existence of higher-frequency neighbors constitutes a necessary condition for concreteness effects to appear in the lexical decision task. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that semantic information is accessed and used to generate the responses in lexical decision when inhibition from orthographic forms delays the target word recognition.     

Reexamining the word length effect in visual word recognition: New evidence from the English Lexicon Project

In the present study, we reexamined the effect of word length (number of letters in a word) on lexical decision. Using the English Lexicon Project, which is based on a large data set of over 40,481 words (Balota et al., 2002), we performed simultaneous multiple regression analyses on a selection of 33,006 English words (ranging from 3 to 13 letters in length). Our analyses revealed an unexpected pattern of results taking the form of a U-shaped curve. The effect of number of letters was facilitatory for words of 3–5 letters, null for words of 5–8 letters, and inhibitory for words of 8–13 letters. We also showed that printed frequency, number of syllables, and number of orthographic neighbors all made independent contributions. The length effects were replicated in a new analysis of a subset of 3,833 monomorphemic nouns (ranging from 3 to 10 letters), and also in another analysis based on 12,987 bisyllabic items (ranging from 3 to 9 letters). These effects were independent of printed frequency, number of syllables, and number of orthographic neighbors. Furthermore, we also observed robust linear inhibitory effects of number of syllables. Implications for models of visual word recognition are discussed.