Abstract
Mixed-case WoRdS disrupt performance in word recognition tasks and sentence reading. There is, however, a controversial issue around this finding as the hindered performance could be related to impoverished lexico-semantic access or to lack of visual familiarity. The present experiments aim to examine whether there is a genuine mixed-case effect during lexico-semantic access or whether the effect is driven by a visual familiarity bias (i.e., lack of familiarity may induce a bias toward “no” responses in word/nonword decisions). Participants were presented with same-case vs. mixed-case items in a word/nonword discrimination task (lexical decision) and in a task that requires access to semantic information (semantic categorization). In lexical decision, responses were faster and more accurate to same-case words than to mixed-case words, whereas the nonwords showed the opposite pattern. In two semantic categorization experiments, we failed to find any signs of a case-mixing effect for words. Therefore, the case-mixing effect in word recognition is not due to an impoverished access to lexico-semantic information but rather to lack of visual familiarity.
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Notes
What we should also note is that there is ERP evidence that N170 amplitude is sensitive to case mixing (Lien, Allen, & Crawford, 2012), and this may be taken as an early signature of case-mixing. However, as Perea et al. (2015) noted, “it is difficult to make strong inferences on the connection between this early, perceptual ERP effect and lexical access” (p. 42).
We thank Ken Forster for suggesting this explanation.
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Funding
The research reported in this article has been partially supported by Grants PSI2014-53444-P (Manuel Perea), PSI2017-86210-P (Manuel Perea), and BES-2015-07414 (Ana Marcet) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
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The procedures involving human participants in this study were approved by the Experimental Research Ethics Committee of the Universitat de València and they were in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All individuals provided written informed consent before starting the experimental session.
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Perea, M., Fernández-López, M. & Marcet, A. Does CaSe-MiXinG disrupt the access to lexico-semantic information?. Psychological Research 84, 981–989 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1111-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1111-7