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Syntactic context effects on word recognition: A developmental study
Author(s) -
HYÖNÄ JUKKA,
LINDEMAN JOHANNA
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1994.tb00930.x
Subject(s) - psychology , noun , context (archaeology) , adjective , sentence , linguistics , lexical decision task , context effect , word recognition , word (group theory) , cognitive psychology , cognition , paleontology , philosophy , reading (process) , neuroscience , biology
In the present study, grammatical context effects on word recognition were examined among skilled and less skilled second and sixth grade readers. Of particular interest was how the word decoding ability may correlate with the grammatical context effect. For this purpose the rich case‐marking system of the Finnish language was exploited. Recognition latencies for sentence‐final nouns were measured as a function of their syntactic agreement with the preceding adjective. The naming and lexical decision tasks were used as critical measures. The study showed a clear syntactic context effect for each of the four experimental groups. The magnitude of the observed syntactic effect was substantially larger compared to earlier results. Furthermore, the effect emerged both in naming and lexical decision. In naming, less skilled 2nd grade decoders were more affected by grammatical incongruency than their more competent peers, whereas in lexical decision the skilled 6th graders differed from other groups by showing a smaller syntactic effect. The results are discussed in the light of Stanovich's interactive‐compensatory model of word recognition.