PSYC 2501 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Lexical Decision Task, Word Lists By Frequency, Eye Tracking
26 Apr 2018
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Language and word meanings
• Understanding word meanings
▪ Some words occur more frequently than others
• We respond more rapidly to high-frequency words than low
frequency words
• Lexical decision task
• Decide if something is a word or nonword
• Gets at how you are processing words, accessing words
• Speed at which you decide influenced by a number of
things
• Word frequency effect
• Words that you hear more often have a higher
frequency, so you respond to those faster than
words you don't hear often
• Regularities in the environment influence our
perception
• We also see word frequency effects in eye tracking
• When people read, they spend more time
(fixations) on low frequency words than high
frequency words
• "we put on our socks and shoes" vs "we put on
our stockings and shoes"
• Look at stockings for longer than socks
• Takes longer to access the meaning of low
frequency words
• Lexical ambiguity
• Words with more than one meaning are lexically
ambiguous
• Bug, bank, rose, duck, cast
• Cast vs cook
• The cast worked into the night vs the cook
worked into the night
• People fixated longer on cast than
cook
• Cast is lexically ambiguous
• The dominance of the meanings can have an effect
too
• Tin: could mean a type of metal or a container
for food
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