Abstract
In an investigation of the influence of lexical frequency upon preliminary hesitation (latency) in single-word stimulus presentations, 20 male undergraduates were presented with 10 high-frequency and 10 low-frequency nouns selected from the Thorndike-Lorge (1944) list and instructed to compose sentences containing the stimulus words. Preliminary hesitation was defined as the interval between the presentation of the stimulus word and the first sound uttered by the S, exclusive of repetitions of the stimulus word. Failure to obtain a significant difference between results for the high- and low-frequency series (t =.18, df = 9, p >.05) supported the hypothesis that lexical frequency is not a sufficient condition to account for preliminary hesitation (latency) in single stimulus-word presentations. These findings were interpreted as suggesting the need for distinguishing between lexical frequency and familiarity, i.e., that “more frequent” does not necessarily mean “more familiar.”
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