Dissociating the influence of familiarity and meaningfulness from word frequency in naming and lexical decision performance

Abstract

Performance in two experiments was compared on a list of words of high and low frequency in which familiarity/meaningfulness (FM) was balanced and on a list of high-and low-frequency words in which FM was confounded with frequency (i.e., high frequency-high familiarity vs. low frequency-low familiarity). Both repetition and task (lexical decision and naming) were investigated. In the lexical decision task of Experiment 1, both frequency and repetition effects were larger in the list with FM confounded than in the list with FM matched. In the naming task, frequency and repetition effects and their interaction were significant, but there was no influence of FM list context. In Experiment 2, in which the repetitions occurred across blocks, as opposed to randomly intermixed within a list, similar results were found; however, there was no interaction between list and repetition. The results suggest that an evaluation of items in terms of their meaning and familiarity explains a large part of the variance, only in lexical decision. These dimensions may be cued both by subjective feelings of familiarity and the extent to which semantic information is available and by episodic traces due to recent encounters with the item.

The Interaction of Lexical Semantics and Cohort Competition in Spoken Word Recognition: An fMRI Study

“…This claim for the interaction of form and meaning in the process of word recognition has been supported by a variety of studies in both written and spoken modalities (e.g., Huang & Pinker, 2010;Colombo, Pasini, & Balota, 2006;Hino & Lupker, 1996Tyler, Voice, & Moss, 2000;Cortese, Simpson, & Woolsey, 1997;Hillis & Caramazza, 1995;Strain, Patterson, & Seidenberg, 1995;Miceli, Capasso, & Caramazza, 1994). Both Tyler et al (2000) and Strain et al (1995) found that the difficulty of discriminating between words on the basis of the bottom-up input (either their orthography or phonology) was reduced by semantic constraints.…”

Lexical-semantic reading in a shallow orthography: evidence from a girl with Williams Syndrome

“…In single word reading, the performances of adult and young Italian skilled readers are affected by word frequency, showing that reading Italian aloud is accomplished mainly through the activation of the orthographic and phonological lexical representations of the stimuli, i.e., the lexical procedure (Barca et al, 2002;Bates et al, 2001;Burani et al, 2002Burani et al, , 2007Colombo et al, 2006;Mazzotta et al, 2005). The presence of a word frequency effect in the absence of semantic effects such as word imageability and age of acquisition contributes to the view that a direct lexical-non-semantic reading procedure is available in Italian .…”

“…Support for the latter hypothesis, through the detailed reading performance of a single case study, is specifically interesting considering that the Italian orthography has a regular print-to-sound translation, in which fast and efficient single-word reading aloud can in most cases be accomplished with no lexical lookup. In spite of the transparency of the Italian orthography, better performance in reading high than low frequency words indicates the contribution of lexical access to reading, and this effect has been reported in both Italian adults (Barca, Burani, & Arduino, 2002;Bates, Burani, D'Amico, & Barca, 2001;Burani, Arduino, & Barca, 2007;Colombo, Pasini, & Balota, 2006), young proficient readers (Barca, Ellis, & Burani, 2007;Burani, Marcolini, & Stella, 2002) and developmental dyslexic readers (Barca, Burani, Di Filippo, & Zoccolotti, 2006;Paizi, Zoccolotti, & Burani, 2009). The presence of word frequency effects in the absence of semantic effects such as imageability contributes to the view that lexical reading does occur in Italian, with purely lexical reading (or direct-lexical route) dissociable from lexical-semantic reading Peressotti & Job, 2003).…”

Lexical effects on children’s pseudoword reading in a transparent orthography

“…Empirical evidence on this issue is accumulating. In spite of the consistency of the Italian orthography, word frequency effects have been reported in reading aloud of Italian children, as well as Italian adult readers (e.g., Barca, Ellis, & Burani, 2007;Burani, Marcolini, & Stella, 2002;Colombo, Pasini, & Balota, 2006). Italian children exploit the lexicon from at least the eighth year of age, naming high-frequency words faster and more correctly than low-frequency words.…”