Lexical Decision Essay

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SPA Lab 2: Lexical Decision Making Experiment Abstract Students from Sensation, Perception, and Action class partook in the lexical decision experiment during their own personal selected times. There were 26 participants that performed the experiment and 2 participants were dropped due to technical difficulties. It was hypothesized the reaction times were expected to be faster when an associated word was displayed rather than a non-word was displayed. The influence of a non- word's meaning on lexical decision reaction time (RT) was demonstrated through one experiment. The results supported the spreading activation research question since the word relatedness was affected by the response time. Overall we rejected the null hypothesis and concluded that associated pairs were the fastest of all pairs. Keywords: lexical decision, response time, psycholinguistics, memory SPA Lab 2: Lexical Decision Making Experiment Student’s reaction time to an associated word and a non-word are very different based on one’s background and experience. The lexical decision (Meyer and Schvaneveldt, 1971) is a process of the mind which helps us organize our thoughts when a word is introduced. An associated word with a particular word helps us understand the concept. The lexical decision task is based on a string of words presented to an individual, who will then be asked to decide whether the word was a “word” or a “non-word”. If one were to mention the word “doctor”, lexical decision finds the word, “nurse” to be closely related. Normally, our mind reacts faster to associated words rather than non-associated words since the concept immediately paints a picture linking the word to its surroundings. From the perspective of a lexical decision, when one thinks of a ‘mountain’, the next thought would not be words like, ‘cup’ or ‘phone’. The lexical decision
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