Chronometric studies of language and memory processing typically emphasize changes in mean response time (RT) performance across conditions. However, changes in mean performance (or the lack thereof) may reflect distinct patterns at the level of underlying RT distributions. In seven experiments, RT distributional analyses were used to better…

One of the most studied and least well understood phenomena in episodic memory is the word frequency effect (WFE). The WFE is expressed as a mirror pattern where uncommon low frequency words (LF) are better recognized than common high frequency words (HF) by way of a higher HR and lower FAR. One explanation for the HR difference is the early-phase…