Читать книгу The Science of Reading - Группа авторов - Страница 42

Early studies showed that even for skilled adult readers, exception words produce longer naming latencies than regular words (Baron & Strawson, 1976), termed the regularity effect. Seidenberg et al. (1984) discovered an important additional fact: regularity interacts with frequency. Whereas higher frequency regular and exception words are read equally rapidly (and accurately), lower frequency exception words take longer than lower frequency regular words. This is a well‐replicated effect. It occurs with other types of linguistic information (e.g., Juliano & Tanenhaus, 1994; Pearlmutter & MacDonald, 1995) and reflects a general fact about cognition: The impact of atypical structure can be overcome with sufficient experience, even as it continues to affect performance on less common forms.

Seidenberg and McClelland (1989) simulated several studies that yielded this interaction, showing that it arises in a network in which repetitions of word and subword patterns create a continuum of spelling‐sound consistency; see Plaut et al. (1996) for a formal analysis and further predictions regarding the use of semantics. The DRC models were attempts to replicate these effects (Coltheart et al., 2001). Within this framework, the basic regularity effect occurs because both routes yield the same pronunciations for regular words, but conflicting pronunciations for exceptions, which slows processing. The frequency X regularity interaction is explained by assuming that higher frequency regular and exception words are processed equally rapidly by the lexical route, but for lower frequency exception words, the outputs of the two routes conflict, yielding longer latencies than for regular words.

Coltheart et al. (2001) listed frequency and regularity effects and the frequency X regularity interaction as phenomena that the DRC model correctly reproduced. They evaluated the model by simulating a single behavioral study treated as the “benchmark,” in this case, Paap and Noel (1991). This experiment yielded the frequency by regularity interaction seen in other studies: Lower frequency exception words yielded significantly slower responses than the other conditions, which did not differ from each other. In contrast to these behavioral results, the DRC simulation produced significant regularity effects for both high‐ and low‐frequency words. An interaction with regularity was observed because the effect was larger for lower frequency words. Also, unlike the experiment, the simulation produced a significant frequency effect for regular words. (See supplemental materials at https://osf.io/ay7h6/.) Thus, Coltheart et al. (2001) were correct in stating that their model exhibited frequency and regularity effects, and a frequency X regularity interaction; however, they are not the same effects as in the Paap and Noel study.

The DRC model also erroneously produces regularity effects for both high‐ and low‐frequency words when tested on materials from other studies (e.g., Taraban & McClelland, 1987; Seidenberg et al., 1984; Seidenberg, 1985). Simulations of these studies were not reported, however. Including results for the simulation of one “benchmark” study said to produce a desired outcome but not the missimulations of other studies of the same phenomena is similar to the “file‐drawer problem” in other types of research.