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Muller-Lyer Illusion
Confusing the lengths of arrows.
Lexical Decision Task
Recognising words.
Serial Position Curve
A memory experiment.
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Lexical Decision
Online Experiment
The task is to indicate as quickly and as accurately as possible whether or not what you see is a real word, or a nonword.
Do this by either using the mouse (which can affect the results and be slow) or alternatively by pressing "z" if you see a real word,
and "m" if you see a nonword.
The Experiment
The Results
In the graphs, nonwords are shown in red, words with a high neighbourhood are in light blue, and words with a
low neighbourhood are in dark blue. You should see that the large neighbourhood words gave the fastest responses
(i.e. when you click on the analyse button, the light blue bar should be shortest).
The Explanation
One of the key methods of investigating the processes involved in reading is the lexical decision task.
Any model of reading needs to explain how a particular word can be selected from many similarly featured items,
(known collectively as the neighbourhood). Neighbourhood size is a measure of the orthographic similarity between words
(Coltheart et al., 1977). If a target word is orthographically similar to many words, then the target word is said to have
a large neighbourhood (e.g the word sell has many neighbours such as tell, well, bell, yell and sill).
A target word which is orthographically similar to few words is described as having a small neighbourhood (e.g.
deny only has the neighbours defy and dent.
In lexical decision tasks, Andrews (1989), found that words from large neighbourhoods elicit quicker responses
than words from small neighbourhoods. This finding has been observed in a number of studies
(e.g. Laxon et al., 1992: Scheerer, 1987). The facilitatory effect of neighbourhood size suggests that presentation
of a target word results in activation of all the lexical entries which are similar to the target, and this local activation
somehow speeds up target access. However, the precise nature of this facilitatory effect is a matter of continuing debate.
Jackie Masterson
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