Language and reading 1

Question 1

What 3 methods can be used to study word recognition?

Answer 1

-Eye tracking
-Lexical decision task
-Naming task

Question 2

Describe the use of eye tracking

Answer 2

-Measuring how long people spend looking at a word whilst ready it but monitoring eye movements
-Individual typically reads words off a computer screen and a camera will monitor what words they are observing
-Can tell us how long was spent looking at a word, whether any words were looked back upon and whether words are skipped
-If spent barely any time looking at a word = suggests word recognition was easy

Question 3

Describe the use of a lexical decision task

Answer 3

-Measuring how long it takes for people to distinguish whether a group of letters is a word or not
-Shown series of letters on computer screen and asked to choose ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to if they are a word or not
-Can be used alongside priming - ppts primed with stimulus before doing task
-Longer they take to respond = more difficult word recognition

Question 4

What did Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) find?

Answer 4

-Ppts responded faster and more accurately when words are semantically related e.g. doctor and nurse

Question 5

Describe the use of a naming task

Answer 5

-Measuring how long it takes for someone to start saying a word after seeing it
-Being presented with a word on a computer screen and told to say the word as quickly as they can, without stuttering or saying it wrong

Question 6

What 3 factors affect word recognition?

Answer 6

-Word frequency
-Predictability
-Neighbourhood effects

Question 7

How can word frequency have an impact on word recognition? Give a study example

Answer 7

-Words that are more commonly used are recognised more than infrequent words
-Schilling et al. (1998) conducted a naming task, lexical decision task and an eye tracking task to look at speed of recognition of words
-Low frequency words e.g. armadillo took longer to recognise than high frequency words e.g. teacher shown by all 3 tasks

Question 8

How can predictability have an impact on word recognition? Give a study example

Answer 8

-Words that are predictable are recognised easier than ones that are misleading
-Tulving and Gold (1963) made ppts read and incomplete sentence e.g. “the skiers were buried alive by a sudden…”
-Had two options to choose from to complete the sentence e.g. “ avalanche” which is predictable and “ inflation” which is misleading
-Results found that if the word was relevant to the context then word recognition was easier

Question 9

How can neighbourhood effects have an impact on word recognition? Give a study example

Answer 9

-If similar words exist then word recognition may be quicker
-They may look like the word that is trying to be recognised or sound like it
-Orthographic neighbourhood effects - how the words look e.g. ‘task’ ‘tank ‘rank’
-Andrews (1989,1992) found low frequency words are easier to recognise
-Phonological neighbourhood effects - how words sound e.g. ‘bait’ ‘gate’
-Yates (2005) found that words that have lots of phonological neighbours have quicker word recognition

Question 10

What are the 5 theories of word recognition?

Answer 10

-Morton’s Logogen model
-Word superiority effect (Reicher, 1969 and Wheeler, 1970)
-Interactive Activation model (McClelland and Rumelhart, 1981,1982)
-Transposed letter priming
-Dual route model (Coltheart et al. 2001)

Question 11

REFER BACK TO DOCS FOR INFO ON MODELS INCLUDING IMAGES

Answer 11

REFER BACK TO DOCS FOR INFO ON MODELS INCLUDING IMAGES