EFFECTS OF ORTHOGRAPHIC NEIGHBORHOOD IN VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION - CROSS-TASK COMPARISONS

Effects of orthographic neighborhood in visual word recognition in Spa nish were examined in 5 paradigms: progressive demasking, standard lex ical decision, lexical decision with blocking of neighborhood density, naming, and semantic categorization. The results showed inhibitory ef fects of neighborhood frequency in the progressive-demasking task, in both lexical-decision tasks, as well as for low-density words in the n aming task, and for high-density words in the semantic-categorization task. Higher levels of neighborhood density produced an inhibitory tre nd in the progressive-demasking task, facilitation in lexical decision (significant only when neighborhood density was blocked), and a robus t facilitation effect in naming (only for words with higher frequency neighbors). A global analysis across tasks and one simulation study he lped outline some of the underlying task-specific and task-independent mechanisms.