Age of acquisition and lexical processing

Abstract

Following a brief history of age of acquisition (AoA) research and consideration of measures of AoA, this review examines AoA effects in lexical processing tasks (such as object naming, word reading, and word recognition in the lexical decision task), and in object recognition and semantic processing tasks. It also considers AoA effects in: Memory tasks; face processing tasks; multiple-task studies; and different groups of participants (including bilinguals, aphasics, and deep dyslexics). The review then discusses theoretical accounts of AoA effects, especially within connectionist models, and outlines a number of new and outstanding empirical and theoretical issues in AoA research that are addressed by the papers in this Special Issue.

Acknowledgments

We thank March Brysbaert, John Catling, and Michael Lewis for comments on a draft of this paper. The work of Bob Johnston and Chris Barry is supported by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust (F/00094/AB).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert A. Johnston

Robert A. Johnston is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK