Moret-Tatay, C. 1, 2 , Perea, M. 2 & Rosa, E. 1
1 Universidad Católica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain
2 Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain
The lexical decision task is probably the most common laboratory visual-word identification task. In the usual setup, participants have to press “yes” when the stimulus is a word and “no” when the stimulus is not a word. A number of studies have employed this task with developing readers; however, error rates and/or response times tend to be quite high. One way to make the task easier for young readers is by employing a go/no-go procedure: “if word, press ‘yes’; if not, refrain from responding” (see Perea, Rosa, & Gomez, 2002, M&C, for the advantages of the go/no-go lexical decision task with adult skilled readers). Here we conducted a lexical decision experiment that compared the yes/no and go/no-go variants of the lexical decision task with developing readers (2nd and 4th grade children). Results showed that: i) error rates for words and nonwords were much lower in the go/no-go task than in the yes/no task, ii) lexical decision times were substantially faster in the go/no-go task, and iii) for high-frequency words, there was less variability in the latency data of the go/no-go task. Thus, the go/no-go lexical decision task is preferable to the “standard” yes/no task when conducting experiments with developing readers.