The Locus of the Word Frequency Effect in Speech Production

말소리 산출에서 단어빈도효과의 위치

Three experiments were conducted to determine the exact locus of the frequency effect in speech production. In Experiment 1. a picture naming task was used to replicate whether the word frequency effect is due to the processes involved in lexical access or not. The robust word frequency effect of 31ms was obtained. The question to be addressed in Experiment 2 is whether the word frequency effect is originated from the level where a lemma is selected. To the end, using a picture-word interference task, the significance of interactions between the effects of target frequency, distractor frequency and semantic relatedness were tested. Interaction between the distractor frequency and semantic relatedness variables was significant. And interaction between the target and distractor frequency variables showed a significant tendency. In addition, the results of Experiment 2 suggest that the mechanism underlying the word frequency effect is encoded as different resting activation level of lemmas. Experiment 3 explored whether the word frequency effect is attributed to the lexeme level where phonological information of words is represented or not. A methodological logic applied to Experiment 3 was the same as to Experiment 2. Any interaction was not significant. In conclusion, the present study obtained the evidence supporting two assumptions: (a) the locus of the word frequency effect exists in the processes involved in lemma selection, (b) the mechanism for the word frequency effect is encoded as different resting activation level of lemmas. In order to explain the word frequency effect obtained in this study, the core assumptions of current production models need to be modified.