Experimental Study on A Two-string Lexical Decision Task: Non-words and Words

Abstract

Abstract—This paper introduces the general purposes, hypotheses and designs of the lexical decision task and compares the results of several existing studies. Based on previous studies, three hypotheses are proposed. Then, it illustrates a two-lexical decision task designed and completed by the Research School of Psychology, Australian National University. In comparison with traditional lexical decision task, the two-string lexical decision task further tests participants’ response time to non-words and words. The results of the current two-string lexical decision task experiment verify the validity of previous studies on the one hand, while on the other hand, do not fully support the statement that participants would make faster responses to unrelated words than unrelated non-words. The findings of the current study directly provide cognitive processes for English lexical differentiation and learning, which could give hints to English lexical teaching and acquisition.