TY - JOUR
T1 - Why SAFE is better than FAST
T2 - The relatedness of a word's meanings affects lexical decision times
AU - Azuma, Tamiko
AU - Van Orden, Guy C.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by an NIH FIRST award (CMS 5 R29 NS26247-05) to Guy Van Orden, by an award from the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation to Tamiko Azuma and by National Multipurpose Research and Training Center Grant 5 P60 DC-01409-05 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health. We thank Lisa Cramer, Ray Gibbs, Don Homa, Sue Somerville, and Greg Stone for their comments on earlier drafts. Special thanks to Steve Goldinger for his invaluable comments and suggestions throughout this project. Address correspondence and reprint requests to the first author at The Cognitive Systems Group, Department of Psychology, Box 871104, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104 (e-mail: azuma@ cnet.shs.arizona.edu).
PY - 1997/5
Y1 - 1997/5
N2 - Past lexical decision studies investigating the number of meanings (NOM) effect have produced mixed results. A second variable, the relatedness among a word's meanings, has not been widely studied. In Experiment 1, Relatedness (High or Low), NOM (Many or Few), and nonword condition (legal nonwords or pseudohomophones) were manipulated in lexical decision. No significant effects of NOM or Relatedness were observed in the legal nonword condition. However, in the pseudohomophone condition, Relatedness and NOM both produced significant main effects, and an interaction. Words with few, unrelated meanings produced the slowest response times (RTs); all other words produced statistically equivalent RTs. Results of the pseudohomophone condition of Experiment 1 were replicated in Experiment 2, except the main effect of NOM was not significant. The overall unreliability of NOM effects in these (and previous) experiments lead us to question the contribution of NOM to the observed interaction. NOM metrics are often confounded with relatedness; words with many meanings tend to have highly related meanings. The results show that relatedness among meanings can influence lexical decision performance; the challenge is now to explore alternative measures, other than simple enumeration, to adequately describe word meanings.
AB - Past lexical decision studies investigating the number of meanings (NOM) effect have produced mixed results. A second variable, the relatedness among a word's meanings, has not been widely studied. In Experiment 1, Relatedness (High or Low), NOM (Many or Few), and nonword condition (legal nonwords or pseudohomophones) were manipulated in lexical decision. No significant effects of NOM or Relatedness were observed in the legal nonword condition. However, in the pseudohomophone condition, Relatedness and NOM both produced significant main effects, and an interaction. Words with few, unrelated meanings produced the slowest response times (RTs); all other words produced statistically equivalent RTs. Results of the pseudohomophone condition of Experiment 1 were replicated in Experiment 2, except the main effect of NOM was not significant. The overall unreliability of NOM effects in these (and previous) experiments lead us to question the contribution of NOM to the observed interaction. NOM metrics are often confounded with relatedness; words with many meanings tend to have highly related meanings. The results show that relatedness among meanings can influence lexical decision performance; the challenge is now to explore alternative measures, other than simple enumeration, to adequately describe word meanings.
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U2 - 10.1006/jmla.1997.2502
DO - 10.1006/jmla.1997.2502
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0031145252
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 36
SP - 484
EP - 504
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
IS - 4
ER -