Lexical and orthographic variables in the lexical access of words in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Which variables influence lexical access in Brazilian Portuguese? The present work aimed to analyze the influence of the main lexical and orthographic variables on lexical access: a. lexical frequency, b. orthographic neighborhood, c. grammatical category, d. number of letters, and e. number of syllables. Dual-route models of reading postulate different routes for lexical and orthographic processing, in which these variables differently influence the stages of word processing. Therefore, for a better understanding of the mental lexicon, the influences of these variables should be analyzed in Brazilian Portuguese. To this end, it was applied a psycholinguistic experiment with a lexical decision task in visual modality between words and pseudowords selected and created from the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon. The results showed the following significant differences: words were recognized faster than pseudowords; high-frequency words were recognized faster than medium-frequency words, which were recognized faster than low-frequency words; high orthographic neighborhood words were recognized faster than low orthographic neighborhood words. These results suggest that these variables influence word processing in lexical access. Furthermore, the results of the variables number of letters and number of syllables indicate gradual effects on word recognition. Thus, the present investigation contributes to a better understanding of reading processes during lexical access, as well as, validate the selection, creation, and control of stimuli with the use of corpora in experimental psycholinguistic research in Brazilian Portuguese.