title: Distributional analyses in auditory lexical decision: neighborhood density and word-frequency effects.
abstract: In the present article, the effects of phonological neighborhood density and word frequency in spoken word recognition were examined using distributional analyses of response latencies in auditory lexical decision. A density x frequency interaction was observed in mean latencies; frequency effects were larger for low-density words than for high-density words. Distributional analyses further revealed that for low-density words, frequency effects were reflected in both distributional shifting and skewing, whereas for high-density words, frequency effects were purely mediated by distributional skewing. The results suggest that word frequency plays a role in early auditory word recognition only when there is relatively little competition between similar-sounding words, and that frequency effects in high-density words reflect postlexical checking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore. psygohw@nus.edu.sg
authors.forename: Winston D
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.forename: Lidia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Suárez
authors.forename: Melvin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Yap
authors.forename: Seok Hui
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Tan
mesh_terms: D001307:Auditory Perception; D032882:Comprehension; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D011930:Reaction Time; D013067:Speech Perception