Orthographic Consistency and Word-Frequency Effects in Auditory Word Recognition: New Evidence from Lexical Decision and Rime Detection

Abstract

Many studies have repeatedly shown an orthographic consistency effect in the auditory lexical decision task. Words with phonological rimes that could be spelled in multiple ways (i.e., inconsistent words) typically produce longer auditory lexical decision latencies and more errors than do words with rimes that could be spelled in only one way (i.e., consistent words). These results have been extended to different languages and tasks, suggesting that the effect is quite general and robust. Despite this growing body of evidence, some psycholinguists believe that orthographic effects on spoken language are exclusively strategic, post-lexical, or restricted to peculiar (low-frequency) words. In the present study, we manipulated consistency and word-frequency orthogonally in order to explore whether the orthographic consistency effect extends to high-frequency words. Two different tasks were used: lexical decision and rime detection. Both tasks produced reliable consistency effects for both low- and high-frequency words. Furthermore, in Experiment 1 (lexical decision), an interaction revealed a stronger consistency effect for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words, as initially predicted by Ziegler and Ferrand (1998), whereas no interaction was found in Experiment 2 (rime detection). Our results extend previous findings by showing that the orthographic consistency effect is obtained not only for low-frequency words but also for high-frequency words. Furthermore, these effects were also obtained in a rime detection task, which does not require the explicit processing of orthographic structure. Globally, our results suggest that literacy changes the way people process spoken words, even for frequent words.

Do Bilinguals Automatically Activate Their Native Language When They Are Not Using It?

“…This account assumes parallel activation of different codes, in this case orthography and phonology rather than a native and a non‐native language. But the finding may instead be due to “phonological restructuring,” by which orthography “contaminates phonology during the process of learning to read and write, thus altering the very nature of the phonological representations themselves” (Petrova, Gaskell, & Ferrand, , p. 2). On this account, the acquisition and development of orthographic representations (i.e., literacy) change the nature of the already established phonological representations through learning, and orthographic‐phonologic interactions would not occur during speech processing.…”

MEGALEX: A megastudy of visual and auditory word recognition

“…years ago, Goldinger (1996) mentioned one variable that surely influenced lexical decision performance (word frequency), one that probably affected it (neighborhood density) and one that should be controlled (total stimulus duration). So far, researchers have reported clear frequency effects (e.g., Cleland, Gaskell, Quinlan, & Tamminen, 2006;Connine, Mullennix, Shernoff, & Yelen, 1990;Luce & Pisoni, 1998;Petrova, Gaskell, & Ferrand, 2011;Taft & Hambly, 1986), as well as effects of phonological neighbors that are inhibitory in nature (e.g., Goh, Suárez, Yap, & Tan, 2009;Goldinger, Luce, & Pisoni, 1989;Luce & Pisoni, 1998;Vitevitch & Luce, 1999;Ziegler, Muneaux, & Grainger, 2003), and effects of cohorts (e.g., Marslen-Wilson, 1990;Taft & Hambly, 1986) or uniqueness point (e.g., Goodman & Huttenlocher, 1988).…”

Multiple Influences on Vocabulary Acquisition: Parental Input Dominates

“…Thus, it appears that quality as well as quantity of language is important in children's language development. Competence in word recognition is also a function of how frequently the word is encountered [12], [13], and [14]. In the current study, I operationalize this variable as parental input frequency and ask how word frequency of child directed speech influences vocabulary acquisition.…”

“…Although this variable has not been explored systematically in children, age of acquisition and word frequency have very large and roughly equivalent correlations with adult's reaction time and accuracy in a lexical decision task [15] and [16]. Age-of-acquisition ratings accounted for a substantial percentage of variance after effects of log word frequency, word length, and similarity to other words were accounted for [12]. In another informative study, there was an advantage of high-frequency over low-frequency words acquired fairly late, but early acquisition of words eliminated any frequency advantage [17].…”