Roles of word frequency and age of acquisition in word naming and lexical decision.

Abstract

Six experiments are reported that contrasted the effects of frequency and age of acquisition on written word recognition. Age of acquisition affected word-naming speed when frequency was controlled (Experiment 1), but there was no effect of frequency when age of acquisition was controlled (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 found an effect of age of acquisition upon immediate but not delayed naming speed, but no frequency effect on either immediate or delayed naming once age of acquisition was controlled. Independent effects of frequency and age of acquisition were observed in the lexical decision task (Experiments 5 and 6). Implications for theoretical accounts of word recognition and the possible roles of age of acquisition and frequency in word recognition are discussed.The frequency with which a word occurs in the language is widely believed to affect the ease which that word can be recognized and responded to, with common, high-frequency words being recognized more rapidly and/or more accurately than less common, low-frequency words. This belief has been incorporated into cognitive models of word recognition which regard the capacity to explain frequency effects as an important aspect of a model's adequacy (see Monsell, 1991, for a review of both evidence and theories). We argue in this article that for several aspects of visual word recognition, this belief in the importance of word frequency is mistaken. We suggest that it has arisen because^f a consistent failure to disconfound the possible effects of word frequency from effects of other factors which correlate with frequency, most notably the age at which words are learned. High-frequency words tend to be learned earlier in life than low-frequency words, so that sets of words selected as being of high or low frequency of occurrence tend also to be sets of words which are early-or late-acquired, respectively. Despite evidence that age of acquisition (AOA) affects visual word recognition (see Brown & Watson, 1987;Gilhooly & Watson, 1981), most studies of word frequency have failed to control for it. Evidence from the existing

Comparing Electrophysiological Correlates of Word Production in Immediate and Delayed Naming Through the Analysis of Word Age of Acquisition Effects

“…As explained in the Introduction, two possible loci of AoA effects in picture naming have been suggested: lexical-semantic (Belke et al, 2005;Johnson & Barry, 2005) and lexical phonological encoding processes (Chalard & Bonin, 2006;Morrison and Ellis, 1995;Morrison et al, 1992). Different amplitudes between early-and late-acquired words were observed in four distinct time periods.…”

“…However, the reliably of lexical frequency effects has been challenged since effects of word AoA have also been reported (e.g., Bonin, Fayol, & Chalard, 2001;Bonin, Chalard, Méot, & Fayol, 2002;Chalard, Bonin, Méot, Boyer, & Fayol, 2003;Morrison, Ellis, & Quinlam, 1992;Morrison & Ellis, 1995). Especially, when those variables are operationalised following the recommendations made by Zevin and Seidenberg (2002) 1 , reliable AoA effects were reported on conceptually driven spoken production (as in picture naming paradigms, Bonin et al, 2004).…”

“…This means that early-acquired word forms are encoded faster than late-acquired ones. This 6 hypothesis is based on the fact that AoA effects were observed neither in lexical-semantic tasks (Chalard & Bonin, 2006;Morrison et al, 1992) nor in delayed production tasks (Morrison & Ellis, 1995), therefore excluding lexical-semantic encoding levels or motor processes. However, AoA effects have been recently reported with semantic tasks (Belke, Brysbaert, Meyer, & Ghyselinck, 2005;Johnson & Barry, 2005), supporting the alternative hypothesis of a lexical-semantic locus of AoA effects.…”

Age of acquisition effects in picture naming: evidence for a lexical-semantic competition hypothesis

“…Words that were acquired early in life are responded to faster than late-acquired words of the same frequency (Morrison & Ellis, 1995). In word naming and lexical decision, the effects 0022-2860/$ -see front matter q…”

Age of acquisition, word frequency, and the role of phonology in the lexical decision task

“…In particular, if current theories are correct in suggesting that AoA affects the retrieval of phonology and low-frequency words are more dependent on such phonological processing in the LDT, then AoA should interact with frequency. In previous studies of AoA effects in the LDT, researchers have not been able to look for interactions between AoA and frequency, since they have generally used multiple regression designs (see, e.g., Gilhooly & Logie, 1982) or semifactorial designs (e.g., Morrison & Ellis, 1995). In the experiment reported here, we used a fully factorial (or 2 X 2) design, in which we manipulated AoA and frequency orthogonally and in which we matched the words in each condition on other important dimensions (such as concreteness) that affect latencies in the LDT.…”