G3) Lexical decision as a function of word plausibility

Tasks:

• Produce a list of 15 real words, 15 non-words which are potential English words, and 15 non-words that involve segmental anomalies. All words should have the same number of letters.
• Upload these stimuli to the experiment site http://www.intro2psycholing.net/experiments/visual/word_freq/freq_index.php, following the instructions there.
• Get a few fellow students with good competence in English to carry out the experiment for you without informing them about its purpose.
• Compare the results to see whether the difference between potential and anomalous words has an influence on the speed and accuracy of lexical decision.

Notes:

• If you do not get the expected results, a reason may be that reaction time experiments are subject to many distorting factors.
• Which problems did you notice with the experiment? What could an experimenter do to prevent these from arising and to obtain undistorted results?

Source:

Companion website of: Warren, Paul (2013) Introducing Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://www.intro2psycholing.net/index.php