ANAGRAM EFFECTS IN VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION

P. Courrieu & M. Lequeux / Anagram Effects 18 / 40sub-groups, the anagram of the test word was taken as the prime, while in theother sub-group, anagrams were swapped between test words, so that theprime was not anagram of the target. In all cases, the prime and the targetnever had similar letters at the same position. The sub-groups with and withoutanagram prime were swapped for half the participants, thus the items (targetsand primes as well) were balanced with respect to the anagram-control primeconditions. The distractors were 48 regular 5-letter pseudo-words preceded bya word in 16 cases and a non-word in 32 cases, with the first stimulus beinganagram of the second half of the time. An additional set of 24 prime-targethal-00429184, version 1 - 1 Nov 2009pairs was selected for training, with the same characteristics as the rest of thematerial.Table 5. Mean log-frequency of use (with standard deviation) of the test wordsused in Experiment 2.Set 1AnagramsSet 2AnagramsSet 3Non AnagramsFrequentInfrequent7.73 (1.40)4.89 ( 0.36)7.72 (1.35)4.90 (0.39)7.72 (1.38)4.88 (0.37)ResultsThe mean response times and correct response percentages are presented inTable 6. Given the counterbalanced experimental design, the data were inputinto two separate analysis of variance, one for participants and one for items.The independent variables were the target frequency of use (frequent vs.infrequent), the type of prime (anagram vs. control), and the set (1, 2, 3).