title: How a hobby can shape cognition: visual word recognition in competitive Scrabble players.
abstract: Competitive Scrabble is an activity that involves extraordinary word recognition experience. We investigated whether that experience is associated with exceptional behavior in the laboratory in a classic visual word recognition paradigm: the lexical decision task (LDT). We used a version of the LDT that involved horizontal and vertical presentation and a concreteness manipulation. In Experiment 1, we presented this task to a group of undergraduates, as these participants are the typical sample in word recognition studies. In Experiment 2, we compared the performance of a group of competitive Scrabble players with a group of age-matched nonexpert control participants. The results of a series of cognitive assessments showed that the Scrabble players and control participants differed only in Scrabble-specific skills (e.g., anagramming). Scrabble expertise was associated with two specific effects (as compared to controls): vertical fluency (relatively less difficulty judging lexicality for words presented in the vertical orientation) and semantic deemphasis (smaller concreteness effects for word responses). These results suggest that visual word recognition is shaped by experience, and that with experience there are efficiencies to be had even in the adult word recognition system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
authors.forename: Ian S
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Hargreaves
authors.forename: Penny M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Pexman
authors.forename: Lenka
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zdrazilova
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sargious
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005716:Game Theory; D006686:Hobbies / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000145:classification / Q000502:physiology*; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods; D011581:Psychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000145:classification / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult