title: The influence of phonological neighborhood on visual word perception.
abstract: In the research reported here, we investigated the influence of phonological neighborhood density on the processing of words in the visual lexical decision task. The results of the first experiment revealed that words with large phonological neighborhoods were verified more rapidly than words with small phonological neighborhoods. In the second experiment, we replicated this effect with a more tightly controlled set of stimuli. These results demonstrate the importance of phonological codes when processing visually presented letter strings. We relate this research to previous results on semantic and orthographic neighborhoods and discuss the results within the context of a model in which lexical decisions are based on stimulus familiarity.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688, USA. myates@usouthal.edu
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yates
authors.forename: Lawrence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Locker
authors.forename: Greg B
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Simpson
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D014796:Visual Perception; D014825:Vocabulary