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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese
Published on: April 1, 2016
On recognizing proper names: the orthographic cue hypothesis
Francesca Peressotti1, Roberto Cubelli, Remo Job
1Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy. francesca.peressotti@unipd.it
Abstract:
Five experiments investigated the recognition of proper names and common nouns using the lexical decision paradigm. In Experiments 1-3 the case of the initial letter of written stimuli was systematically varied. An advantage was consistently found for proper names written with the first letter in capital. Crucially, response times to proper names with the first letter in lowercase and to common nouns irrespective of the case of the first letter did not differ from each other. No difference between proper names and common nouns emerged in Experiment 4 where the stimuli were presented auditorily, and in Experiment 5 where a visual lexical decision task was performed with illegal non-words. The pattern of results shows that the proper name advantage is orthographic in nature and rules out an account in terms of semantic, morphological or other lexical variables. A model is proposed in which information about the case of the first letter is specified in the abstract multidimensional orthographic representation mediating written word recognition.
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