Lexico-semantic structure and the word-frequency effect in recognition memory
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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Joseph D Monaco1, L F Abbott, Michael J Kahana
1Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kolb Research Annex, New York, New York 10032-2695, USA. joe@neurotheory.columbia.edu
Abstract:
The word-frequency effect (WFE) in recognition memory refers to the finding that more rare words are better recognized than more common words. We demonstrate that a familiarity-discrimination model operating on data from a semantic word-association space yields a robust WFE in data on both hit rates and false-alarm rates. Our modeling results suggest that word frequency is encoded in the semantic structure of language, and that this encoding contributes to the WFE observed in item-recognition experiments.
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