AN EXAMINATION OF WORD-FREQUENCY AND NEIGHBORHOOD DENSITY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPOKEN-WORD RECOGNITION

In this study, the effects of word-frequency and phonological similari ty relations in the development of spoken-word recognition were examin ed. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults listened to increasingly l onger segments of high- and low-frequency monosyllabic words with many or few word neighbors that sounded similar (neighborhood density). Ol der children and adults required less of the acoustic-phonetic informa tion to recognize words with few neighbors and low-frequency words tha n did younger children. Adults recognized high-frequency words with fe w neighbors on the basis of less input than did all three of the child ren's groups. All subjects showed a higher proportion of different-wor d guesses for words with many versus few neighbors. A frequency X neig hborhood density interaction revealed that recognition is facilitated for high-frequency words with few versus many neighbors; the opposite was found for low-frequency words. Results are placed within a develop mental framework on the emergence of the phoneme as a unit in perceptu al processing.