Visual word recognition of multisyllabic words

Visual word recognition of multisyllabic words (click here)
Melvin J. Yap a,*, David A. Balota b
a Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, Block AS4, #02-07, Singapore 117570, Republic of Singapore
b Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, MO 63130, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 11 February 2008
revision received 31 January 2009
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Visual word recognition
Multisyllabic words
Megastudies
Lexical decision
Speeded pronunciation
Computational models
a b s t r a c t
The visual word recognition literature has been dominated by the study of monosyllabic
words in factorial experiments, computational models, and megastudies. However, it is
not yet clear whether the behavioral effects reported for monosyllabic words generalize
reliably to multisyllabic words. Hierarchical regression techniques were used to examine
the effects of standard variables (phonological onsets, stress pattern, length, orthographic
N, phonological N, word frequency) and additional variables (number of syllables, feedforward
and feedback phonological consistency, novel orthographic and phonological similarity
measures, semantics) on the pronunciation and lexical decision latencies of 6115
monomorphemic multisyllabic words. These predictors accounted for 61.2% and 61.6% of
the variance in pronunciation and lexical decision latencies, respectively, higher than the
estimates reported by previous monosyllabic studies. The findings we report represent a
well-specified set of benchmark phenomena for constraining nascent multisyllabic models
of English word recognition.