We describe a leaky competing accumulator (LCA) model of the lexical decision task that can be used as a response/decision module for any computational model of word recognition. The LCA model uses evidence for a word, operationalized as some measure of lexical activity, as input to the "YES" decision node. Input to the "NO" decision node is…

This study investigated the application of the speeded lexical decision task to L2 aural processing efficiency. One-hundred and twenty Japanese university students completed an aural word/nonword task. When the variation of lexical decision time (CV) was correlated with reaction time (RT), the results suggested that the single-word recognition…

Questions the theory of a common conceptual code for knowledge and shows that some of the claims for bilingual equivalence may be accommodated by notions of strategy, set, and skill. Suggests that means-specific representations may provide as plausible an account of knowledge as appeals to a common code do. (EKN)

In the present study, we looked at cross-modal priming effects produced by auditory presentation of morphologically complex pseudowords in order to investigate semantic integration during the processing of French morphologically complex items. In Experiment 1, we used as primes pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and…

When does morphological decomposition occur in visual word recognition? An increasing body of evidence suggests the presence of early morphological processing. The present work investigates this issue via an orthographic similarity manipulation. Three masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the transposed-letter…

The word length effect has been a central feature of theorising about immediate memory. The notion that short-term memory traces rapidly decay unless refreshed by rehearsal is based primarily upon the finding that serial recall for short words is better than that for long words. The decay account of the word length effect has come under pressure…

Two experiments are reported in which subjects judged whether pairs of words viewed simultaneously contained the same stem morpheme. Reaction times for making these judgments are discussed. (Author/RM)

Describes experiments that examined the effects of orthographic similarity on lexical decisions and compared decision times to words when they are preceded by unrelated words. Results indicate that lexical decisions about spoken words were shown to be influenced by the spelling of an immediately preceding item. (SED)

Reports on an experiment designed to study the role of letter stems in the identification of printed words. The stemmed letters b,d,g,h,l,p and t were used. Results showed that the suppression of the letter's body has more detrimental effects on identification than the suppression of the stem. (Author/RM)

Examines, through an investigation of the effect of word frequency on lexical decision, alternative views of how the internal lexicon is structured and searched. A model is developed based on two internal lists: one a ready-access list, the other a complete list. (Author/AM)

A set of experiments are reported in which it was found that most subjects were better at identifying both meaning and wording changes in concrete sentences and subjects took significantly longer to encode and decode the abstract sentences. Implications of these findings are discussed. (Author/RM)

Expanded version of a talk presented at the meeting of the Eastern Verbal Investigators League, Brandeis University, May 1, 1971. (VM)

Research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. (DS)

In some psycholinguistic models, processing is characterized by generation of multiple outputs using information from higher processing levels. Such models are considered autonomous in word recognition domain but interactive in sentence processing domain. This confusion arises not from differences between lexical and syntactic processing, but from…

Two experiments explore the activation of semantic information during spoken word recognition. Experiment 1 shows that as the name of an object unfolds (e.g., lock), eye movements are drawn to pictorial representations of both the named object and semantically related objects (e.g., key). Experiment 2 shows that objects semantically related to an…