Kwok Rosa Kit Wan, Ellis Andrew W
a Department of Psychology , University of York , York , UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2015;68(2):326-49. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2014.944549. Epub 2014 Sep 12.
Three experiments are reported analysing the processes by which adult readers of English learn new written words. Visual word learning was simulated by presenting short (four-letter) and longer (seven-letter) nonwords repeatedly and observing the reduction in naming latencies and the convergence in reaction times (RTs) to shorter and longer items that are the hallmarks of visual word learning. Experiment 1 presented nonwords in ten consecutive blocks. Naming latencies reduced over the first four or five presentations. The effect of length on naming RTs was large in block 1 but non-significant after four or five presentations. Experiment 2 demonstrated some reduction in RTs to untrained nonwords following practice on a trained set, but the reduction was less than for the trained items and RTs to shorter and longer nonwords did not converge. Experiment 3 included a retest after seven days which showed some slowing of RTs compared with the end of the first session but also considerable retention of learning. We conclude that four to six exposures to novel words (nonwords) are sufficient to establish durable lexical representations that permit parallel processing of newly-learned words. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of reading and word learning.
本文报告了三项实验，分析了以英语为母语的成年读者学习新书面单词的过程。通过反复呈现短（四个字母）和长（七个字母）的非单词，并观察命名潜伏期的缩短以及对较短和较长项目的反应时间（RT）的趋同，来模拟视觉单词学习，这是视觉单词学习的标志。实验1连续十个块呈现非单词。在前四次或五次呈现中，命名潜伏期缩短。长度对命名RT的影响在第1块中很大，但在四次或五次呈现后不显著。实验2表明，在对一组经过训练的非单词进行练习后，对未训练的非单词的RT有所降低，但降低程度小于对经过训练的项目，并且对较短和较长非单词的RT没有趋同。实验3在七天后进行了重新测试，结果显示与第一阶段结束相比，RT有所减慢，但学习的保留程度也相当可观。我们得出结论，对新单词（非单词）进行四到六次接触足以建立持久的词汇表征，从而允许对新学单词进行并行处理。本文根据阅读和单词学习的理论模型对结果进行了讨论。
