title: Additive and interactive effects of word frequency and masked repetition in the lexical decision task.
abstract: In previous studies, additive effects of masked repetition and word frequency on lexical decision latency have been reported. This additive pattern was replicated in Experiment 1 with the use of low-frequency words (range, 1-7 per million) selected at random. In contrast, in Experiment 2, in which low-frequency words known to be familiar to the subjects were used, the masked repetition priming effect was greater for low-frequency than for high-frequency words. It is suggested that the absence of an interaction between masked repetition and frequency observed in previous studies and in the present Experiment 1 was due to the fact that very-low-frequency words often have an unstable representation in the subjects' lexicon and, consequently, sometimes fail to produce repetition priming effects in full.
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia. skinoshi@maccs.mq.edu.au
authors.forename: Sachiko
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kinoshita
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010507:Periodicity; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary