Abstract
Four experiments investigating processing of closed-class and open-class words in isolation and in sentence contexts are reported. Taft (1990) reported that closed-class words which could not meaningfully stand alone and open-class words which could not meaningfully stand alone incurred longer lexical decision responses than did control words. Taft also reported that closed-class and open-class words which could stand alone meaningfully were not associated with longer lexical decision responses than were control words. Experiments 1 and 2 replicated Taft 's effect of ability to stand alone on lexical decision responses to closed-class and open-class words presented in isolation. In Experiments 3 and 4, the same lexical decision targets were presented as part of semantically neutral context sentences in a moving window paradigm. The stand-alone effect was not present in Experiments 3 and 4. The results suggest Toft's conclusion that meaningfulness of a word influences lexical decision needs revision. An explanation is provided according to which support from message level and syntactic and lexical sources in sentence contexts influence words' perceived “meaningfulness.”
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The experiments reported here were performed as part of the author's dissertation research at the University of Massachusetts. The research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Grant HD-18708 to Dr. Charles Clifton, Jr., and Dr. Lyn Frazier, and NIH Training Grant HD-07327 to the University of Massachusetts. Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by a Research and Productive Scholarship grant from the University of South Carolina to the author.
I thank my committee chairperson, Charles Clifton, and committee members Lyn Frazier, Keith Rayner, Judith Kroll, and Rachel Clifton for suggestions and comments on the research. Thanks also to John Huitema and Shari Speer for helpful discussion.
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René Schmauder, A. Ability to stand alone and processing of open-class and closed-class words: Isolation versus context. J Psycholinguist Res 25, 443–481 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01706346
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01706346