Determinants of lexical access in speech production: Role of word frequency and age of acquisition
Category
Journal Article
Authors
Cuetos, F., Alvarez, B., Gonzalez-Nosti, M., Méot, A., Bonin, P.
Year
2006
Title
Determinants of lexical access in speech production: Role of word frequency and age of acquisition
Journal / book / conference
Memory & Cognition
Abstract
The main determinants of lexical access in speech are considered to be a word's age of acquisition (AoA) and its frequency of occurrence in a speaker's experience. It is unclear whether and how these variables interact, although they are commonly observed to be correlated, for the few studies that address the issue have reported inconsistent findings. An influential view of AoA in lexical processing (Ellis & Lambon Ralph, 2000) predicts stronger frequency effects for items acquired later in life dim for those acquired at an early age. Five experiments were designed to investigate the possible interaction of AoA and frequency effects in speech. We found that the interaction between word frequency and AoA was not robust and that, contrary to expectation, the effect of word frequency was greater for words acquired earlier in life than for those acquired later. The implications of our findings are discussed.
Issue
5
Volume
34
Pages
999-1010