Abstract
In the go/no-go lexical decision task (LDT), participants are instructed to respond as quickly as they can when a word is presented and not to respond if a nonword is presented. By minimizing part of the response selection process in the experimental task, the impact of response decision time on the obtained lexical decision time is probably reduced relative to the standard yes/no LDT (Gordon, 1983). Experiments 1 and 2 show that the go/no-go LDT is sensitive to the effects of word frequency and associative priming—the magnitude of these effects is similar with the two tasks. More important, the go/no-go LDT has a number of advantages with respect to the “standard” yes/no LDT: It offers faster response times, more accurate responding, and fewer processing demands than does the yes/no task. Accordingly, the go/no-go task appears to be an excellent alternative to the standard yes/no task.
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Parts of this research were reported at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New Orleans, 2000. The first author was supported by a grant from the Secretaría de Estado de Educación y Universidades of Spain. The second and third authors were recipients of predoctoral grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Culture.
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Perea, M., Rosa, E. & Gómez, C. Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task?. Mem Cogn 30, 34–45 (2002). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195263
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195263