Summary
It has been known for nearly 100 years that single words presented tachistoscopically are better recognized than arbitrary letter strings. The present experiments investigate the impact of the morphological structure of words and of word frequency on the word superiority effect. It has been shown that inflected word forms show higher reaction time and error scores in the lexical decision task and higher error scores in the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm. Word frequency also determines lexical decision time. However, no frequency effect in the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm could be found. The results are discussed in the framework of McClelland and Rumelhart's (1981) model of context effects in letter search.
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This paper is mainly (Experiments I and III) based on the first author's ‘Habilitationsschrift’ from October, 1982 (cf. Günther 1983a).
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Günther, H., Gfroerer, S. & Weiss, L. Inflection, frequency, and the word superiority effect. Psychol. Res 46, 261–281 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308888
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308888