Abstract
The lexicon plays a fundamental role in reading, but little is known about how it influences reading efficiency. Thus, this study seeks to identify which lexical factors in a lexical decision task are relevant in a semantic decision test. A total of 33 university students were recruited to perform a lexical decision task and a semantic decision task. The results revealed differences between the three types of words in the lexical decision task for all measures, but only in the regressive saccades for the semantic decision task. Ambiguous sentences triggered fewer regressions than sentences related to objects. The only lexical measure found to predict efficiency was average time on regular words, which predicted 24% of the efficiency. We discuss the implications of the use of a lexical decision task and the use of the inverse efficiency score as a semantic measure, and we discuss how the lexicon can predict semantic comprehension.
Highlights
The ability to read is essential for knowledge acquisition because of the increasing importance of formal education
To clarify the relationship between the lexical and semantic components and laboratory tests for these skills, this study aims to identify the lexical factors in lexical decision tasks relevant for semantic decision tests
The participants had an average of 7.5 errors for the 108 quasi-words and 2.4 errors for the 72 regular words
Summary
The ability to read is essential for knowledge acquisition because of the increasing importance of formal education. The lexical component is responsible for the systematic organization of vocabulary and the storage of word-related information for word recognition and comprehension (Fernald, Perfors, & Marchman, 2006; Lupker, 2011). This information includes the phonology, morphology, and semantics of words (Field, 2004) and is linked to reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). Lexical decision tasks are used to evaluate lexical access and lexical formation They enable the analysis of lexical items (Gijsel, Bon, & Bosman, 2004), which can be either real words or pseudo-words (Balota & Chumbley, 1984). The semantic component is linked to the comprehension of words and sentences, whose meanings are connected and form a complex network that gives meaning to the text (Kintsch & Rawson, 2011)
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