Participants shift response deadlines based on list difficulty during reading-aloud megastudies

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• The list homogeneity effect describes how item presentation influences cognitive task performance.
• Previous research suggests item blocking may impact reading aloud metrics.
• Megastudies, large-scale data collection efforts, are increasingly used in cognitive science.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the list homogeneity effect in reading aloud using a megastudy paradigm.
• To determine if blocking words by difficulty influences the predictability of reaction times (RTs) by standard variables.
• To assess the impact of item presentation order on computational models of word processing.

Main Methods:

• A megastudy paradigm comparing random versus blocked (by difficulty) word presentation in reading aloud.
• Two conditions with 25 blocks of 100 trials each.
• Regression analyses using sublexical, lexical, and semantic variables to predict RTs.

Main Results:

• Reaction times (RTs) exhibited larger standard deviations and ranges in the blocked condition compared to the random condition.
• A response bias was observed at the extremes of item difficulty.
• Predictor variables accounted for more RT variance in the blocked condition (2.8% more) than in the random condition.

Conclusions:

• Response deadlines are relevant in megastudies of reading aloud, influencing the observed effects of predictors.
• Randomized item presentation in megastudies may lead to an underestimation of predictor influence on RTs.
• Computational models, like CDP++, may show greater predictive power when data is blocked by difficulty, suggesting the need to account for response criterion shifts.