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Neighborhood Frequency Effect in Chinese Word Recognition: Evidence from Naming and Lexical Decision

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Abstract

Neighborhood frequency is a crucial variable to know the nature of word recognition. Different from alphabetic scripts, neighborhood frequency in Chinese is usually confounded by component character frequency and neighborhood size. Three experiments were designed to explore the role of the neighborhood frequency effect in Chinese and the stimuli were all two-character words. This effect was evaluated on targets with- and without-higher frequency neighbors with neighborhood size matched. Among the experiments, the patterns of the leading character frequency effect and word frequency effect in the naming and lexical decision tasks were compared. The results implied an inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect in Chinese word recognition. Accordingly, a possible cognitive mechanism of the neighborhood frequency effect was thus proposed.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST 103-2410-H-002-083) to Jei-Tun Wu and (MOST 104-2420-H-002-004) to Tai-Li Chou. We thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Rm. 307, South Building, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, 10617, Taipei, Taiwan

    Meng-Feng Li, Xin-Yu Gao, Tai-Li Chou & Jei-Tun Wu

  2. Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, 10617, Taipei, Taiwan

    Tai-Li Chou

Authors
  1. Meng-Feng Li
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  2. Xin-Yu Gao
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  3. Tai-Li Chou
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  4. Jei-Tun Wu
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Correspondence to Jei-Tun Wu.

Appendices

Appendix 1: High-Frequency Words Used in Experiment 1, 2 and 3

figure m

Appendix 2: Low-Frequency Words Used in Experiment 1, 2 and 3

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Li, MF., Gao, XY., Chou, TL. et al. Neighborhood Frequency Effect in Chinese Word Recognition: Evidence from Naming and Lexical Decision. J Psycholinguist Res 46, 227–245 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9431-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9431-5

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