There goes the neighbourhood: Contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation when reading aloud

There are currently two computational accounts of how the time to read pseudohomophones (like BRANE) and their nonword controls (like FRANE) varies with changes in context. In Reynolds and Besner's (2005) account, readers vary the breadth of lexical activation in response to changes in context. A competing account proposed by Kwantes and Marmurek (2007 Kwantes, P. and Marmurek, H. 2007. Controlling lexical contributions to the reading of pseudohomophones. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14: 373–378. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and independently by Perry, Ziegler, and Zorzi (2007 Perry, C., Ziegler, J. C. and Zorzi, M. 2007. Nested incremental modeling in the development of computational theories: The CDP+ model of reading aloud. Psychological Review, 114: 273–315. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has readers varying their response criterion in response to changes in context. The present work adjudicates between these two accounts by examining how the effect of neighbourhood density changes as a function of list context when reading pseudohomophones aloud. The results of an experiment and simulations from a leading computational model support the lexical breadth account, but are inconsistent with the response criterion account.