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Neighborhood Effects on Nonword Visual Processing in a Language with Shallow Orthography

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Abstract

Neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency were orthogonally varied in two experiments on Italian nonwords. In Experiment 1, an inhibitory effect of neighborhood frequency on visual lexical decision was found: The presence of one high-frequency neighbor increased response latencies and error rates to nonwords. By contrast, no effect of neighborhood size and no neighborhood size × neighborhood frequency interaction were found. In Experiment 2, a facilitatory effect of neighborhood size on nonword naming was shown: Naming latencies were faster when nonwords had a large neighborhood. In the naming experiment, there was no effect of neighbors' frequency and no neighborhood size × neighborhood frequency interaction. An additional role for bigram frequency was found whereas syllable frequency did not give any independent contribution. These results further corroborate the view that, in a language with transparent orthography like Italian, despite a substantial contribution of sublexical print-to-sound mapping due to the language's high regularity/consistency, reading aloud of nonlexical material may benefit from the contribution of the lexical component.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy

    Lisa S. Arduino & Cristina Burani

  2. University of Urbino, Italy

    Lisa S. Arduino

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  1. Lisa S. Arduino
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  2. Cristina Burani
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Correspondence to Lisa S. Arduino.

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Arduino, L.S., Burani, C. Neighborhood Effects on Nonword Visual Processing in a Language with Shallow Orthography. J Psycholinguist Res 33, 75–95 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOPR.0000010515.58435.68

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOPR.0000010515.58435.68

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