Word Recognition

Part 1

The first step to this assignment is to participate in an experiment! These results will not be used for research purposes, it is purely for educational value. The aggregated and anonymized results will be shared with the class after data collection is complete. 

Ideally you participate in a study “naively” so we don’t want you to read more about it before participating. It takes only about 10 minutes, but must be completed on a computer (not tablet or phone). Make sure to read the instructions carefully and enter your uniqname to receive credit towards this assignment. It is OK if you don’t know some of the words! We know that you have a variety of language backgrounds, so do not worry about getting everything correct – it’s not a language test. Do make sure that you are at least paying attention though, as you will not receive credit if it is evident that you just pressed buttons indiscriminately! Yes, we can tell. 🙂 

Important accessibility note: the study involves reading words on your monitor, alternating with a plus sign in the center of the screen. While these do not “flash” quickly, the timed nature of the reading task may be difficult for some. The instructions explain the task, and there are some practice trials to see how it works. The study may be difficult for those with dyslexia or vision challenges, depending on the specifics of your condition. You are welcome to try it and let us know if it is not accessible for you. We are not aware of any evidence that this type of study triggers migraines, but if you are susceptible to migraines and don’t want to take the risk, just let us know! Folks with ADHD or other conditions that limit impulse inhibition may make more accidental  responses, but such data typically do not resemble those found with deliberate inattentiveness, so just do your best and try not to stress about those accidental key presses!

OK, scroll down for Part 2 after you have done Part 1! 

Part 2

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to learn more about some methods used to study word recognition (and sentence processing) in the context of a paper with a very simple, non-factorial design. Since they include most of their stimuli, it’s also a chance to dive a bit more into how stimuli design works for linguistic studies, rather than just discussing a few key example stimuli. We can also run our own class replication based on the stimuli to get first-hand experience with lexical decision and to see if the class shows the same results! 

Background:

we started learning about variables that affect word recognition such as ambiguity, cohorts, neighborhood density, cross-language word relations, and frequency! This paper talks about another hypothesized variable that is relevant to specific sets of verbs – their event complexity. In studying this variable, the authors also have to try to control for the many other variables that cannot be completely removed from the words (you can’t really get rid of word frequency if you want to study real words!). So you can see how these variables intertwine and influence experiment design. 

This is the bibliographic information for the paper, which you can download on the file section:  File name: Gennari, S., & Poeppel, D. (2003).

• Gennari, S., & Poeppel, D. (2003). Processing correlates of lexical semantic complexity. Cognition, 89(1), B27–B41. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00069-6 (Links to an external site.)

provide you with important support in understanding the reading and writing up your response. You don’t need to understand every detail, but the aim is to extract the important conceptual pieces and features of the study designs, and to understand how they relate to the topics we are covering in class.

Basic Assignment: 

For this assignment, you should read the complete paper referenced above, and write a 250-500 word response (not including references) addressing all of the following questions:

• On what basis do Gennari and Poeppel (2003) hypothesize that “event” verbs would take longer to process than “state” verbs? In other words, what is their “linking hypothesis” for associating these verb types with the behavioral response of slower reading/reaction times?
• For experiment 2, Gennari and Poeppel (2003) describe factors that they matched in stimulus pairs across the two conditions (“event” and “state”), with pairs provided in Appendix C. Given what we have covered about word recognition, why would they have matched conditions for these factors? Explicitly discuss at least two of the factors (word length, frequency, number of senses, orthographic neighborhood density, subjective familiarity ratings, most frequent syntactic frame). Explain what effects have been previously observed and how they would/could impact the interpretation of the experimental variable (verb type). 
• Based on your experience as a participant in the experiment, what did you think the study was testing or looking for? Does it align with the actual aim of the experiment as described in the paper? What perspective does your participation give you about the design and conclusions of the study? (There is no right or wrong answer for this aspect, we just would like you to reflect!)-

Other details:

You can use your textbook, lecture notes, section notes, and other outside materials to help you answer these questions if needed. All sources used and cited should be reliable scientific sources and you should make sure to cite them clearly (in the text and include bibliographic information in the references section). Use quotation marks when including direct quotes (when absolutely necessary to quote).  Write in your own words as much as possible – quotations should only be used to convey a specific phrasing you need to preserve from an original source.

Aim to write these in a roughly “academic” style of English, but we will not be grading you based on your language use, as long as you make your points clear. When you need to cite sources, we are not too concerned about the formatting, but make sure the relevant information is included and use APA style or similar for any references (without stressing about exactly where each ‘period’ and ‘parenthesis’ goes, what is supposed to be italicized and such – mostly make sure the critical bibliographic content is there). You do not need to submit an “APA style paper” with title page, abstract, etc – we just suggest this as a guideline for formatting the citations/references.