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Updated: Oct 23, 2026

Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese
Published on: April 1, 2016
Effects of clausal structure and word frequency in sentence processing
Abstract:
A phoneme-monitoring task was employed to test the effects of clausal structure and lexical ambiguity on sentence processing. Results supported the hypothesis that the clause serves as a psychologically real unit of sentence processing, with the semantic interpretation of each clause being assigned at the clause boundary. The frequency of the ambiguous or control word preceding the critical item in the phoneme-monitoring task was also found to affect the results obtained, with higher frequency words leading to longer mean reaction times.
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