Special Attention and Word Frequency Effects on Reading

Abstract

Word recognition researches have dichotomous opinion on attentional utility, where some studies establish the attentional utility and other researches pose the question on the requisition of attention during reading, owing to the prevalent belief of automaticity inreading. Spatial attention has been attentional variant receiving mixed findings from lexical decision tasks and Stroop tasks as being the prerequisite (Lachter, Forster, & Ruthruff, 2004) and not necessary (Brown, Gore, & Carr, 2002), respectively. Present study explored the attentional utility during word reading through manipulation of the word frequency alongwith spatial attention through Posner’s cueing paradigm to address the frequency-basedhypothesis of automaticity in reading. A 2 (Frequency: High and Low) × 3 (Cue: Valid, Invalid, Neutral) repeated measure design was applied. Thirty participants from 18 to 22 yrs contributed to the study. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed the better correct detection rate under valid cue conditions (p = 0.00). In addition, the incorrect detection rate was lowest for valid cue conditions (p = 0.00). Perceptual sensitivity and response criterion measures further supported the results. Findings have been explained in terms of activation- confusion model and mirror frequency effects.