Effects of word frequency and spelling-to-sound regularity in naming with and without preceding lexical decision.

The effects of word frequency and spelling-to-sound regularity were examined using standard naming, standard lexical-decision, go/no-go naming, and go/no-go lexical-decision tasks. In both the standard and go/no-go naming tasks, tasks requiring phonological coding, a significant Frequency x Regularity interaction was observed. That is, the regularity effect was limited to low-frequency words. In the standard and go/no-go lexical-decision tasks, tasks not requiring phonological coding, no Frequency x Regularity interaction was observed. These results indicate not only that the Frequency x Regularity interaction is a product of phonological coding processes but also that these processes are similar in the standard and go/no-go naming tasks. Results are discussed in terms of the dual-route and the parallel distributed processing frameworks.