Читать книгу The Science of Reading - Группа авторов - Страница 47

An additional phenomenon serves to illustrate that DRC’s treatment of nonwords yielded a broad range of anomalous results. Coltheart et al. (2001) simulated a widely cited study by Weekes (1997) that examined the effect of length (3–6 letters) on the pronunciation of high‐and low‐frequency words and nonwords. Nonword reading times showed a linear increase with length. The time taken to read lower frequency words also showed a linear increase with length but the slope was shallower. Higher frequency words showed no effect of length.

For their simulation, Coltheart et al. (2001) collapsed the data for high and low frequency words, which then showed no reliable effects of length, in contrast to nonwords. The DRC simulation reproduced this word‐nonword difference, because the nonlexical route used for nonwords operates serially, whereas the lexical route does not. The length effect for nonwords but not words was taken as another finding the model successfully explained.

This account is inaccurate. The DRC model produced length effects for nonwords but not words; however, Weekes (1997) found a length effect for lower frequency words, which was not examined in the simulation. Looking at all three conditions, the correct generalization is about the impact of frequency, not lexicality, on length effects: high‐frequency words < low‐frequency words < nonwords, which are tantamount to very low frequency words. Several studies predating Coltheart et al. (2001) found length effects on word naming that were modulated by frequency and reading skill: Mason (1978), Cosky (1976), Frederiksen and Kroll (1976); see New et al. (2006) and Barton et al. (2014). In Balota et al.’s (2007) large corpus of naming times, length effects are observed for both words and nonwords.

Coltheart et al.’s treatment of the Weekes 1997 study is problematic. The DRC model did not accurately simulate the results of the study or others like it. The characterization of the findings as showing that length affects nonwords but not words was inaccurate. The explanation of a word‐nonword difference does not explain the difference between the two types of words. The narrow focus on Weekes’ 1997 experiment did not yield a deeper understanding of the relationship between lexicality and length. Coltheart et al.’s (2001) claim that the DRC model accounts for this relation is therefore unwarranted.