Open Linguistics 2017; 3: 500–515 Cristina Izura*, Natividad Hernández-Muñoz The Role of Semantics in Spanish Word Recognition: an Insight from Lexical Decision and Categorization Tasks https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2017-0025 Received October 10, 2014; accepted July 20, 2017 Abstract: This study examines the factors affecting word recognition in a language with a consistent system to map letters into sounds; Spanish. The influence of semantics on the recognition of words in languages with inconsistent mappings, such as English, is well documented. Not much is known for other languages. A lexical decision task and two category verification tasks with varying levels of semantic complexity were used. In contrast to English, none of the semantic variables entered into the analyses had a significant impact on lexical decision latencies or errors. Imageability showed an influence on responses to both category verification tasks while the effect of connectivity was marginally significant in the category verification task with the greatest semantic complexity. Results indicate that word recognition decisions can be made without the involvement of central components of the semantic system. The role of semantics in word recognition in languages with consistent spelling systems will be discussed. Keywords: imageability, connectivity, number of associates, age of acquisition, word recognition 1 Introduction Completing a lexical decision task requires making a decision as to whether a letter string, such as ‘nup’, is a real word or not. The time lapsed between the presentation of the letter string and the response (i.e. pressing a key), along with the accuracy at reaching the decision, are assumed to be good measures of word recognition processes (Balota, Cortese, Sergent-Marshall, Spieler, & Yap, 2004; Yap, Balota, Cortese, & Watson, 2006; but see also Diependaele, Brysbaert, & Neri, 2012). The abundance of word recognition studies using the lexical decision task is an index of the fundamental role that this paradigm plays in the investigation of single word recognition processes (e.g. over thirteen hundred papers have been published in the last forty years (Ovid SP Gateway, 2012). Many early studies showed that the characteristics of non-words are methodologically important when making lexical decisions. Meaningless letter strings are not only essential for creating a decision environment but in addition, their internal structure has a direct impact on the recognition processes. Thus, more time is needed to identify a word as a word and a non-word as a non-word, when the sequence of letters in the non-word is orthographically plausible, as in ‘bluck’ and ‘crain’ for the English language, than when the letter pattern of the non-word is orthographically implausible as in ‘nnwrd’ (Evans, Lambon Ralph, & Woollams, 2012; Gibson, Bishop, Schiff, & Smith, 1964; Gibson, Pick, Osser, & Hammond, 1962; James, 1975; Richardson, 1976). A well-accepted account for these response time differences is that the depth of Research Article *Corresponding author: Cristina Izura, Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, Wales, UK, E-mail: c.izura@swansea.ac.uk Natividad Hernández-Muñoz, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain Open Access. © 2017 Cristina Izura, Natividad Hernández-Muñoz, published by De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Brought to you by | Universidad de Salamanca Authenticated Download Date | 11/6/17 10:16 AM