Lexical decision in children: Sublexical processing or lexical search?

Length effects in the lexical decision latencies of children might indicate that children rely on sublexical processing and essentially approach the task as a naming task. We examined this possibility by means of the effects of neighbourhood size and articulatory suppression on lexical decision perf...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) 2012-06, Vol.65 (6), p.1214-1228
Main Authors: van den Boer, Madelon, de Jong, Peter F., Haentjens-van Meeteren, Marleen M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Factors
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Decision Making
Developmental psychology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Language
Lexical decision
Linguistics
Male
Neighbourhood size
Neuropsychological Tests
Production and perception of written language
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Reading
Reading development
Semantics
Sublexical processing
Verbal Learning - physiology
Vocabulary
Word length effect
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Summary:Length effects in the lexical decision latencies of children might indicate that children rely on sublexical processing and essentially approach the task as a naming task. We examined this possibility by means of the effects of neighbourhood size and articulatory suppression on lexical decision performance. Sixty-six beginning and 62 advanced readers performed a lexical decision task in a standard, articulatory suppression, or tapping condition. We found length effects on words and nonwords in the children's lexical decisions. However, the effects of neighbourhood size were similar to those reported for adult lexical decisions, rather than the effects previously found in children's naming. In addition, no effect was found of articulatory suppression. Both findings suggest that, despite clear length effects, children do not adopt a naming task approach but, like adults, base lexical decisions mainly on a lexical search. These results pose a challenge for several computational models of reading.
ISSN:1747-0218
1747-0226
DOI:10.1080/17470218.2011.652136