Sequential effects in the lexical decision task: the role of the item frequency of the previous trial.

Full Abstract

Two lexical decision experiments were conducted to determine whether there is a specific, localized influence of the item frequency of consecutive trials (i.e., first-order sequential effects) when the trials are not related to each other. Both low-frequency words and nonwords were influenced by the frequency of the precursor word (Experiment 1). In contrast, high-frequency words showed little sensitivity to the frequency of the precursor word (Experiment 2), although they showed longer reaction times for word trials preceded by a nonword trial. The presence of sequential effects in the lexical decision task suggests that participants shift their response criteria on a trial-by-trial basis.

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Author information

Author/s: Perea, Manuel (M); Carreiras, Manuel (M);

Affiliation: Universitat de València, València, Spain. mperea@uv.es

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology (Q J Exp Psychol A), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Apr; vol 56 (issue 3) : pp 385-401

Dates: Created 2003/05/14; Completed 2003/07/28; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12745840, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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