Feedforward and Feedback Consistency Effects for High- and Low-Frequency Words in Lexical Decision and Naming

Abstract

In three experiments, we examined feedforward and feedback consistency effects in word recognition. Feedforward consistency is the degree to which a word's pronunciation is consistent with that of similarly spelled words, and feedback consistency refers to whether there is more than one way to spell a pronunciation. Previously, Stone, Vanhoy, and Van Orden (1997) reported feedforward and feedback consistency effects for low-frequency words in a lexical decision task. We investigated the effect of feedforward and feedback consistency for both high- and low-frequency words in lexical decision and naming. In both tasks, we found that feedforward and feedback inconsistent words were processed more slowly than consistent words, regardless of word frequency. These findings indicate that both types of consistency are involved in visual word recognition.