Biomedical subjects

Mark Yates

Publications and source records attributed to Mark Yates.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Phonological neighbors speed visual word processing: evidence from multiple tasks.

The author investigated the role of phonological neighborhood on visual word recognition. Using a lexical decision task, the author showed in Experiment 1 that words with large phonological neighborhoods were processed more rapidly than those with smaller phonological neighborhoods. This facilitative effect was obtained even when the nonword fillers had the same number of phonological neighbors as the words. This finding indicates that phonological neighbors speed processing within the phonological system. In the next 2 experiments, this claim was further tested using the naming and semantic categorization tasks. In both experiments, the effect of phonological neighborhood was found to be facilitative. The results across all 3 experiments indicate that phonology is central to visual word recognition and that phonological neighborhood provides a reliable measure of phonological processing.

Humans↗

PubMed2004

The influence of phonological neighborhood on visual word perception.

In the research reported here, we investigated the influence of phonological neighborhood density on the processing of words in the visual lexical decision task. The results of the first experiment revealed that words with large phonological neighborhoods were verified more rapidly than words with small phonological neighborhoods. In the second experiment, we replicated this effect with a more tightly controlled set of stimuli. These results demonstrate the importance of phonological codes when processing visually presented letter strings. We relate this research to previous results on semantic and orthographic neighborhoods and discuss the results within the context of a model in which lexical decisions are based on stimulus familiarity.

Decision Making↗

PubMed2003

Semantic neighborhood effects on the recognition of ambiguous words.

The effect of semantic neighborhood on the processing of ambiguous words was examined in two lexical decision experiments. Semantic neighborhood was defined in terms of semantic set size and network connectivity. In Experiment 1, the variables of semantic set size, network connectivity, and ambiguity were crossed. An ambiguity advantage was observed only within small-set low-connectivity words. In Experiment 2, the effect of network connectivity on the processing of words of high and low meaning relatedness was examined. Participants responded more rapidly to words of high meaning relatedness, relative to words of low meaning relatedness, but only within high-connectivity words. These results are interpreted within a framework in which both semantic feedback processes and meaning-level competition can affect the recognition of semantically ambiguous words.

Decision Making↗

PubMed2003

Semantic and phonological influences on the processing of words and pseudohomophones.

In two experiments, we investigated the relationship between semantics and phonology in the lexical decision task. In the first experiment, lexical decisions to words with large semantic neighborhoods were faster than those to words with sparse semantic neighborhoods. Conversely, this effect of semantic neighborhood was reversed for pseudohomophones (e.g., nale). That is, pseudohomophones based on words with large semantic neighborhoods took longer to reject than did those based on words with sparse semantic neighborhoods. In the second experiment, we found the magnitude of the semantic neighborhood effect for words to be a function of nonword foil type. Taken together, these results indicate that semantic neighborhood size affects processing of both words and pseudohomophones, and that the effect of semantic neighborhood size for words is more pronounced when pseudohomophone foils are employed. These effects are discussed in terms of a model in which the orthographic, phonological, and semantic systems are fully interactive.

Humans↗