What do we know about psycholinguistic effects?

Abstract

Identifying clear and unequivocal psycholinguistic effects for lexical retrieval tasks has been the aim of a significant proportion of recent research activity. Debates have erupted concerning the existence or otherwise of particular effects on particular lexical tasks. Here, it is suggested that the reason for these debates is that researchers exercise choice in what variables they consider in their analysis. It is further illustrated that methods that have been employed for comparing the size of these effects between tasks can only lead to inconclusive results. It is suggested that psycholinguistic data may be better analysed using structural equation modelling methodologies. An example of such an approach is presented.

This research was funded by a Leverhulme Trust grant. We thank Todd Bailey, David Balota, Dennis Norris, Melvin Yap, and other anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions.

Notes

¹ We thank Sachiko Kinoshita for suggesting this justification.