Responding to nonwords in the lexical decision task: Insights from the English Lexicon Project

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Statistical word properties influence lexical processing.
• The impact of lexical variables on nonword decision-making is less understood.
• Understanding nonword responses offers insights into early lexical processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate psycholinguistic variables influencing nonword lexical decision performance.
• Explore individual differences in nonword response patterns.
• Inform computational models of word recognition.

Main Methods:

• Item-level and participant-level analyses of lexical decision data.
• Utilized trial-level data for nearly 37,000 nonwords from the English Lexicon Project.
• Employed regression analyses to identify significant predictors of nonword responses.

Main Results:

• Nonword response time correlated positively with length, orthographic neighbors, affixes, and base-word syllables.
• Response time correlated negatively with Levenshtein distance and base-word frequency.
• Higher vocabulary knowledge showed differential sensitivity to nonword features.

Conclusions:

• Nonword characteristics significantly predict lexical decision performance.
• Individual differences, particularly vocabulary knowledge, modulate responses to nonwords.
• Findings provide constraints for computational models of word recognition and lexical decision.