Auditory word recognition: extrinsic and intrinsic effects of word frequency.
Two experiments investigated the influence of word frequency in a phoneme identification task. Speech voicing continua were constructed so that one endpoint was a high-frequency word and the other endpoint was a low-frequency word (e.g., best-pest). Experiment 1 demonstrated that ambiguous tokens were labeled such that a high-frequency word was formed (intrinsic frequency effect). Experiment 2 manipulated the frequency composition of the list (extrinsic frequency effect). A high-frequency list bias produced an exaggerated influence of frequency; a low-frequency list bias showed a reverse frequency effect. Reaction time effects were discussed in terms of activation and postaccess decision models of frequency coding. The results support a late use of frequency in auditory word recognition.
Connine
C M
CM
Department of Psychology, State University of New York, Binghamton 13901-6000.
Titone
D
D
Wang
J
J
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D014825:Vocabulary