Two experiments were carried out to investigate the orthographic neighborhood density (N) and neighborhood frequency effects (NF) in reading aloud tasks. The experimental stimuli consisted of 64 words corresponding to a 2x2 factorial manipulation of N and NF. In the first experiment, during a Go/NoGo reading aloud task, an inhibitory NF effect was observed when the words had a high number of neighbors. In the second experiment, a reading aloud task in which the subjects had to pronounce words and pseudowords mixed in the same session, a facilitative N effect was observed. N and NF effects were attributed to different task demands on the process of lexical access.
Visual word recognition; orthographic neighborhood; lexical access; reading
