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Orthographic neighborhood effects as a function of word frequency: An event‐related potential study
Author(s) -
VergaraMartínez Marta,
Swaab Tamara Y.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2012.01410.x
Subject(s) - psychology , categorization , word (group theory) , metric (unit) , word lists by frequency , scalp , similarity (geometry) , event related potential , orthographic projection , cognitive psychology , communication , speech recognition , electroencephalography , natural language processing , linguistics , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science , medicine , philosophy , operations management , sentence , economics , image (mathematics) , anatomy
The present study assessed the mechanisms and time course by which orthographic neighborhood size ( ON ) influences visual word recognition. ERPs were recorded to words that varied in ON and in word frequency while participants performed a semantic categorization task. ON was measured with the O rthographic L evenshtein D istance ( OLD 20), a richer metric of orthographic similarity than the traditional C oltheart's N metric. The N 400 effects of ON (260–500 ms) were larger and showed a different scalp distribution for low than for high frequency words, which is consistent with proposals that suggest lateral inhibitory mechanisms at a lexical level. The ERP ON effects had a shorter duration and different scalp distribution than the effects of word frequency (mainly observed between 380–600 ms) suggesting a transient activation of the subset of orthographically similar words in the lexical network compared to the impact of properties of the single words.