Citation

Herdman CM, Dobbs AR. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 1989; 15(1): 124-132.

Affiliation

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

2522522

Abstract

Becker's (1976, 1979, 1980, 1985; Becker & Killion, 1977; Eisenberg & Becker, 1982) verification model was used as a framework to investigate the attentional demands of word recognition. In two experiments, a lexical decision task and an auditory probe task were performed in single- and dual-task conditions. Responses to probes were divided into detection and movement measures that indexed the demands of recognition and response output, respectively. In Experiment 1, single- to dual-task decrements in probe detection performance were larger during low-frequency as compared with high-frequency trials. This finding indicates that the attentional demands of word recognition vary with word frequency. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2, which was designed to separate a response compatibility and a capacity interpretation of the results. The findings are interpreted within Becker's verification model.

Language: en