Lexical Decision in Children: Sublexical Processing or Lexical Search?

Abstract

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Parallel and serial reading processes in children’s word and nonword reading.

“…These contrasts specified the differences between three versus four and four versus five letter items. The contrasts were tested simul taneously in a multivariate test, using a chi-square statistic with two degrees of freedom (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). The main effects of class were tested with a single contrast, resulting in a chi-square statistic with one degree of freedom.…”

“…These effects, however, were found at the level of letter identifi cation, not serial activation of phonology. Similarly, Van den Boer et al (2012) found length effects in the lexical decisions of children, while independent evidence suggested that items were processed in parallel through the lexical route. Together, these findings indicate that a length effect in and of itself does not prove that serial processes underlie word identification.…”

“…In fact, length effects have been found that could not be ascribed to serial processing through the nonlexical route (Risko, Lanthier, & Besner, 2011;van den Boer, de Jong, & Haentjens-van Meeteren, 2012). Risko et al (2011), for example, found that increased spacing between letters resulted in increased effects of item length.…”

“…Within the DRC framework, length effects have been studied as indicators of whether phonology is activated predominantly serially or in parallel. In the early stages of reading development, the speed of single word and nonword reading increases as a function of the number of letters, whereas in ad vanced readers this length effect becomes restricted to longer words (i.e., more than six letters) and nonwords (e.g., Marinus & de Jong, 2010;Spinelli et al, 2005;van den Boer, de Jong, & Haentjens-van Meeteren, 2013;Weekes, 1997;Ziegler, Perry, Ma-Wyatt, Ladner, & Schulte-Kome, 2003;Zoccolotti et al, 2005). A length effect is presumed to occur when words are identified through serial activation of phonology, whereas the absence of a length effect indicates that phonology is activated in parallel.…”

Lexical and Phonological Processes in Dyslexic Readers: Evidence from a Visual Lexical Decision Task

“…When performing lexical decisions, subjects are expected to primarily rely on lexical search (including children; van den Boer, de Jong, & Meeteren, 2012;Schmalz, Marinus, & Castles, 2012), with the lexicon being searched serially in the order of word frequency (Coltheart et al, 2001). It was, therefore, expected that Portuguese-speaking normal readers would respond faster to high-frequency words than to low-frequency words and pseudowords.…”