Decision and search processes in word-nonword classification.

Stanners, Robert F.; Forbach, Gary B.; Headley, Donald B.

doi:10.1037/h0031359

Cited by 25 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Reaction time was longer for words (e.g., MAID) that were homophonie with other English words (e.g., MADE) than for nonhomophones (e.g., BATH). Similar results have been obtained by other investigators (Snodgrass & Jarvella, 1972;Stanners, Forbach, & Headley, 1971). According to Rubenstein et al, their findings indicate the occurrence of phonemie encoding.…”

Section: Evidence For the Phonemic-encoding Hypothesissupporting

confidence: 82%

Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word-recognition

Meyer¹,

Schvaneveldt

Ruddy³

1974

Memory & Cognition

458

301

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous investigators have argued that printed words are recognized directly from visual representations and/or phonological representations obtained through phonemic recoding. The present research tested these hypotheses by manipulating graphernic and phonemic relations within various pairs of letter strings. Ss in two experiments classified the pairs as words or nonwords. Reaction times and error rates were relatively small for word pairs (e.g., BRIBE-TRIBE) that were both graphemically and phonemically similar. Graphemic similarity alone inhibited performance on other word pairs (e.g., COUCH-TOUCH). These and other results suggest that phonological representations play a significant role in visual word recognition and that there is a dependence between successive phonemic-encoding operations. An encoding-bias model is proposed to explain the data.

show abstract

Section: Evidence For the Phonemic-encoding Hypothesissupporting

confidence: 82%

Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word-recognition

Meyer¹,

Schvaneveldt

Ruddy³

1974

Memory & Cognition

458

301

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The pattern of means of the error data is in agreement with the results of two previous experiments (Stanners, Forbach, & Headley, 1971;Stanners & Forbach, 1973). One recurrent relationship is that errors on words tend to have longer latencies than do correct responses; presumably S makes an unsuccessful exhaustive search on an errar trial.…”

supporting

confidence: 80%

Repetition and practice effects in a lexical decision task

1974

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ss classified visually presented verbal units into the categories "in your vocabulary" or "not in your vocabulary." The primary concern 01' the experiment was to determine if making a prior decision on a given item affects the latency 01' a subsequent lexical decision for the same item. Words 01' both high and low frequency showed a systematic reduction in the latency 01' a lexical decision as a consequence 01' prior decisions (priming) but did not show any reduction due to nonspecific practice effects. Nonwords showed no priming effect but did show shorter latencies due to nonspecific practice. The results also indicated that many (at least 36) words can be in the primed state simultaneously and that the effect persists for at least 10 min. The general interpretation was that priming produces an alteration in the representation 01' a word in memory and can facilitate the terminal portion 01' the memory search process which is assumed to be random.Some recent experiments Meyer, Schvaneveldt, & Ruddy, 1972) have demonstrated semantic priming effects in memory using a word-nonword classification task. The results indicate that Ss can make faster lexical decisions for primed, as cornpaired to unprimed, words. One such priming technique (Meyer et al, 1972) consists of sequentially presenting a pair of semantically related words, e.g., BREAD-BUTTER, and requiring a lexical decision for each. A positive decision for BUTTER is faster if preceded by BREAD than if preceded by an unassociated word such as NURSE. The priming technique in a word-nonword classification task appears to offer a very general and useful method for identifying an d measuring characteristics of the functional organization of memory.Another kind of priming effect was suggested in a tachistoscopic recognition experiment by Morton (1964) in which Ss often mistakenly responded with words which had occurred on some earlier trial. This result suggests the possibility of a temporary alteration in the status of a memory representation which makes the item more accessible. The concern of the present experiment was to investigate priming which might result from making a lexical decision about the same letter string more than once during aseries of trials. A priming effect based on repetition would indicate that a memory representation may be altered, at least temporarily, simply by its activation. The repetition technique would also have the advantage of allowing for the comparison of priming effects for words and nonwords as a means of investigating possible differences in memory representations for these types of items. Two further objectives of the present study were to determine if *The present experiment was partially supported by funds from the Oklahoma State University Research Foundation.tRequests for reprints should be sent to Gary B. Forbach, who is now at the Department 01' Psychology, Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas 66621. several items would be in the primed state simultaneously and to investigate nonspecific practice effects, the effect on...

show abstract

“…This paradigm requires subjects to determine as quickly as possible whether a stimulus item is a word or a nonword. Early research using lexical decision examined structural effects of visually presented lexical items on the speed of classifying these items as words or nonwords (Snodgrass & Jarvella, 1972;Stanners & Forbach, 1973;Stanners, Forbach, & Headley, 1971). In other research, the lexical decision task has been used to investigate the effects of frequency on classification time (Rubenstein, Garfield, & Millikan, 1970;Rubenstein, Lewis, & Rubenstein, 1971;Stanners, Jastrzembski, & Westbrook, 1975) and the status of morphologically related items in memory (Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, & Hall, 1979;Stanners, Neiser, & Painton, 1979;Taft & Forster, 1975, 1976.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of phonological similarity on priming in auditory lexical decision

1986

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two auditory lexical decision experiments were conducted to determine whether facilitation can be obtained when a prime and a target share word-initial phonological information. Subjects responded "word" or "nonword" to monosyllabic words and nonwords controlled for frequency. Each target was preceded by the presentation of either a word or nonword prime that was identical to the target or shared three, two, or one phonemes from the beginning. The results showed that lexical decision times decreased when the prime and target were identical for both word and nonword targets. However, no facilitation was observed when the prime and target shared three, two, or one initial phonemes. These results were found when the interstimulus interval between the prime and target was 500 msec or 50 msec. In a second experiment, no differences were found between primes and targets that shared three, one, or zero phonemes, although facilitation was observed for identical prime-target pairs. The results are compared to recent findings obtained using a perceptual identification paradigm. Taken together, the findings suggest several important differences in the way lexical decision and perceptual identification tasks tap into the information-processing system during auditory word recognition.Researchers concerned with issues in word recognition and lexical access have relied on the lexical decision paradigm to answer a number of fundamental questions about the representation of words in memory and the processes used to contact these representations in language processing. This paradigm requires subjects to determine as quickly as possible whether a stimulus item is a word or a nonword. Early research using lexical decision examined structural effects of visually presented lexical items on the speed of classifying these items as words or nonwords (Snodgrass & Jarvella, 1972;Stanners & Forbach, 1973;Stanners, Forbach, & Headley, 1971). In other research, the lexical decision task has been used to investigate the effects of frequency on classification time (Rubenstein, Garfield, & Millikan, 1970;Rubenstein, Lewis, & Rubenstein, 1971;Stanners, Jastrzembski, & Westbrook, 1975) and the status of morphologically related items in memory (Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, & Hall, 1979;Stanners, Neiser, & Painton, 1979;Taft & Forster, 1975, 1976.The basic design of the paradigm has also been extended to examine the priming effects of associated items on lexical decision times. Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) found that subjects were faster at classifying a letter string (e.g., DOCTOR) as a word if the preceding letter string was an associated word (e.g., NURSE) than if the preceding letter string was an unassociated word (e.g., BUTTER).The research reported here was supported by NIH Grant NS-12l79 to Indiana University in Bloomington. We would like to thank Paul A. Luce for assistance in recording the stimuli and for his comments on the manuscript. We also thank Joseph Sternberger for several suggestions. Requests for reprints should be sent to L. M. S...

show abstract

Decision and search processes in word-nonword classification.

Cited by 25 publications

References 9 publications

Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word-recognition

Functions of graphemic and phonemic codes in visual word-recognition

Repetition and practice effects in a lexical decision task

Effects of phonological similarity on priming in auditory lexical decision

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About