On the norming of homophones

Gorfein, David S.; Weingartner, Kristin M.

doi:10.3758/brm.40.2.522

“…Seventy-eight heterographic homophone word pairs (156 words) were selected from a list of 207 presented in Gorfein and Weingartner [37]. Homophone pairs were selected that matched in length (M = 4.7), but differed in spelling dominance as measured by word frequency (196 vs. 16 occurrences per million according to the SUBTLEX-US database [39]).…”

Section: Experiments 2bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the Masked Priming Same-Different Task a Pure Measure of Prelexical Processing?

Kelly¹,

Heuven²,

Pitchford³

et al. 2012

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To study prelexical processes involved in visual word recognition a task is needed that only operates at the level of abstract letter identities. The masked priming same-different task has been purported to do this, as the same pattern of priming is shown for words and nonwords. However, studies using this task have consistently found a processing advantage for words over nonwords, indicating a lexicality effect. We investigated the locus of this word advantage. Experiment 1 used conventional visually-presented reference stimuli to test previous accounts of the lexicality effect. Results rule out the use of different strategies, or strength of representations, for words and nonwords. No interaction was shown between prime type and word type, but a consistent word advantage was found. Experiment 2 used novel auditorally-presented reference stimuli to restrict nonword matching to the sublexical level. This abolished scrambled priming for nonwords, but not words. Overall this suggests the processing advantage for words over nonwords results from activation of whole-word, lexical representations. Furthermore, the number of shared open-bigrams between primes and targets could account for scrambled priming effects. These results have important implications for models of orthographic processing and studies that have used this task to investigate prelexical processes.

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“…Thus, in total, we collected AoA ratings for 3,460 ambiguous word senses. We should emphasize that several previous studies have provided free association norms, dominance ratings, and measures of lexical access for the multiple senses of ambiguous words (cf., Gorfein & Weingartner, 2008;Twilley, Dixon, Taylor, & Clark, 1994;White & Abrams, 2004). However, these studies differ in the specific types of ambiguous words on which they focus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, White and Abrams (2004) collected free associations and dominance ratings for the multiple senses of homophones, which they defined as words that share the same phonology, but not the same orthography (e.g., beach and beech). While Gorfein and Weingartner (2008) also examined free associations to the written presentation of homophones, they, in addition, examined how participants would spell these homophones when presented auditorily. Similarly to Gorfein and Weingartner (2008), we were interested in the properties of ambiguous word senses that could be examined in studies that used auditory and/or text presentation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While Gorfein and Weingartner (2008) also examined free associations to the written presentation of homophones, they, in addition, examined how participants would spell these homophones when presented auditorily. Similarly to Gorfein and Weingartner (2008), we were interested in the properties of ambiguous word senses that could be examined in studies that used auditory and/or text presentation. Thus, we chose to examine both homographs and heterographic homophones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Age of acquisition estimates for 1,208 ambiguous and polysemous words

Khanna

¹

,

Cortese

²

2010

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Age of acquisition (AoA) estimates are provided for 3,460 senses of 1,208 words (i.e., words with multiple meanings e.g., duck). The AoA rating estimates appear to be relatively consistent across participants. The SpearmanBrown split-half reliability coefficient is .95, while the correlations between each participant's ratings and the overall mean ratings yielded correlation coefficients between .325 to .794 with a mean of .69 (SD = .10). These estimates will be of use to those interested in: (a) the influence of AoA on word processing, (b) the influence of AoA on meaning access, (c) the structure of semantic memory, and (d) developmental trends in lexical ambiguity resolution. These AoA estimates can be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society's Web archive of norms, stimuli, and data at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

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“…Several experimental paradigms have shown that this difference in written frequencies results in dominance for the higher frequency spelling [37]. This effect of spelling dominancy is extremely robust and is not influenced by recency effects and spelling regularity [38].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the Masked Priming Same-Different Task a Pure Measure of Prelexical Processing?

Kelly

¹

,

Heuven

²

,

Pitchford

³

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To study prelexical processes involved in visual word recognition a task is needed that only operates at the level of abstract letter identities. The masked priming same-different task has been purported to do this, as the same pattern of priming is shown for words and nonwords. However, studies using this task have consistently found a processing advantage for words over nonwords, indicating a lexicality effect. We investigated the locus of this word advantage. Experiment 1 used conventional visually-presented reference stimuli to test previous accounts of the lexicality effect. Results rule out the use of different strategies, or strength of representations, for words and nonwords. No interaction was shown between prime type and word type, but a consistent word advantage was found. Experiment 2 used novel auditorally-presented reference stimuli to restrict nonword matching to the sublexical level. This abolished scrambled priming for nonwords, but not words. Overall this suggests the processing advantage for words over nonwords results from activation of whole-word, lexical representations. Furthermore, the number of shared open-bigrams between primes and targets could account for scrambled priming effects. These results have important implications for models of orthographic processing and studies that have used this task to investigate prelexical processes.

show abstract

On the norming of homophones

Cited by 8 publications

References 29 publications

Is the Masked Priming Same-Different Task a Pure Measure of Prelexical Processing?

Is the Masked Priming Same-Different Task a Pure Measure of Prelexical Processing?

Age of acquisition estimates for 1,208 ambiguous and polysemous words

Is the Masked Priming Same-Different Task a Pure Measure of Prelexical Processing?

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