Magnifying effects on visual word recognition : A dynamic display for Internet-based experiments

Differences in word recognition latencies due to semantic factors are mostly quite small. The small size of these differences almost precludes applications of latency-based assessment methods in the study of social cognition and individual differences. In particular, when doing Internet-based experiments, small but interesting differences might be overlooked because reaction time measurement over the Internet can be error prone (Eichstaedt, 2001). Therefore, the present article introduces a procedure of visual word recognition for magnifying the effects of cognitive processing on recognition latencies. The procedure is realized in software as a dynamic display that makes it possible to measure traits and states in social and personality psychology on the basis of word recognition latencies. Some first applications of the dynamic display include assessments of implicit motives (Eichstaedt & Scheffer, 2005), self-focused attention (Eichstaedt & Silvia, 2003; Silvia, Eichstaedt, & Phillips, 2005), and the effects on word recognition latencies of content category membership, expectancy, and knowledge (Eichstaedt, 2002). These applications benefit from magnifying semantic impacts on word recognition latencies. Moreover, the dynamic display helps to reduce unwanted effects on latencies such as movement initiation time, because the technique increases only recognition times and not motor response times. The present article illustrates in two Internet-based experiments the dynamic display’s utility for magnifying lexical and semantic effects previously established in cognitive psychology—that is, the effects of familiarity and prototypicality. Familiarity and prototypicality are qualities of words, the former referring to the lexical and the latter to the semantic organization of words in memory. The prototypicality of a word as an exemplar of a given category has been investigated extensively in lexical decision tasks and pronunciation tasks (see, e.g., Keefe & Neely, 1990; Lorch, Balota, & Stamm, 1986; Massaro, Jones, Lipscomb, & Scholz, 1978; Neely, Keefe, & Ross, 1989). Prototypicality is an instance of semantic relatedness between the category name and the exemplar name. In contrast, word frequency and familiarity are lexical properties of a given word that have also been investigated extensively in lexical decision and pronunciation tasks (e.g., Becker, 1979; Connine, Mullennix, Shernoff, & Yelen, 1990; Lewellen, Goldinger, Pisoni, & Greene, 1993; Morrison, Ellis, & Quinlan, 1992; Scarborough, Cortese, & Scarborough, 1977). Word frequency and semantic relatedness have been found to interact overadditively—that is, with a combined effect stronger than the sum of both single effects—in lexical decision (see, e.g., Becker, 1979) and to yield a lowfrequency priming advantage in word fragment completion (MacLeod & Kampe, 1996). Likewise, stimulus degradation and semantic relatedness have also been found to interact overadditively in lexical decision (Besner & Smith, 1992; Stolz & Neely, 1995; see Neely, 1991, for a review). To date, however, there has been almost no evidence for an interaction between word frequency and stimulus degradation (but see Norris, 1984; Wilding, 1988). According to the additive-factors logic (Sternberg, 1969), the sole interaction of a semantic rather than a lexical factor with stimulus degradation is challenging evidence for sequential models of word recognition (e.g., Becker, 1980; Morton, 1969), because such an interaction undermines the view of word recognition as a sequence of I thank Franziska Scherer and Paul Silvia for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Correspondence should be addressed to J. Eichstaedt, Department of Psychology, Helmut Schmidt University, Holstenhofweg 85, D-22039 Hamburg, Germany (e-mail: jan.eichstaedt @hsu-hamburg.de).