NEIGHBORHOOD SIZE AND NEIGHBORHOOD FREQUENCY-EFFECTS IN WORD RECOGNITION

What are the effects of a word's orthographic neighborhood on the word recognition process? Andrews (1989) reported that large neighborhoods facilitate lexical access (the neighborhood size effect). Grainger, O 'Regan, Jacobs, & Segui (1989) reported that higher frequency neighbor s inhibit lexical access (the ''neighborhood frequency effect''). Beca use neighborhood size and neighborhood frequency typically covary (wor ds with large neighborhoods will usually possess higher frequency neig hbors), these findings would seem to contradict one another. In the pr esent study, 6 experiments on the effects of neighborhood size and nei ghborhood frequency indicated that, at least for low-frequency words, large neighborhoods do facilitate processing. However, the existence o f higher frequency neighbors seems to facilitate rather than inhibit p rocessing. The implications of these findings for serial and parallel models of lexical access are discussed.