Michael J Cortese

University of Nebraska at Omaha | UN Omaha · Department of Psychology

We conducted a megastudy to examine the spelling of American English monosyllables with typewritten responses. We related both sublexical and lexical/semantic factors to spelling accuracy and reaction time (RT) for the first key press and response duration for spelling 1,856 monophonic monosyllables. We found that: a) each of thirteen predictor var...

The megastudy paradigm has become an important tool for cognitive science. One advantage to the megastudy is that existing data can be reanalysed in light of novel hypotheses. In the current study, recognition memory data for 4819 words were obtained. Multiple regression analyses assessed the influence of emotional variables on recognition memory p...

Data used for analyses that examined relationship between emotion variables (valence, arousal, extremity of valence, context valence, context arousal, context extremity of valence) and recognition memory performance.

We examined how well imageability, concreteness, perceptual strength, and action strength predicted recognition memory, lexical decision, and reading aloud performance. We used our imageability estimates [Cortese, M. J., & Fugett, A. (2004). Imageability ratings for 3,000 monosyllabic words. Behavior Methods and Research, Instrumentation, & Compute...

Data from Cortese, Toppi, Khanna, & Santo (in press) QJEP

In the present study, we analyse data from the English Lexicon Project to assess the extent to which age of acquisition (AoA) effects on word processing stem from the number of semantic associations tied to a word. We show that the backward number of associates (bNoA; that is, the log transformed number of words that produce the target word in free...

We examined how word length affects performance in three recognition memory experiments to resolve discrepant results in the literature for which there are theoretical implications. Shorter and longer words were equated on frequency, orthographic similarity, age of acquisition, and imageability. In Experiments 1 and 2, orthographic length (i.e., th...

Congruency effects for color word associates (e.g., ocean) have been reported in Stroop color naming tasks. However, incidental memory for such words after word reading and color naming tasks has not been examined. In the current study, participants incidentally recalled color word associates (e.g., ocean) and neutral words (e.g., lawyer) immediate...

The megastudy paradigm has recently become popular in cognitive psychology. A megastudy involves obtaining cognitive/behavioral measures for thousands of stimuli responded to on a certain task (e.g., lexical decision). In addition, multiple regression analyses (or variations thereof) are employed on item means to assess relationships between predic...

Results from a megastudy on conditional reading aloud for 2,145 monosyllabic words are reported. In stepwise regression analyses, the predictor variables accounted for over 66% of the reaction time (RT) variance. Linear mixed effect modelling on log RT indicated that every variable that related to RT in either reading aloud or lexical decision also...

We tested the list homogeneity effect in reading aloud (e.g., Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997) using a megastudy paradigm. In each of two conditions, we used 25 blocks of 100 trials. In the random condition, words were selected randomly for each block, whereas in the experimental condition, words were blocked by difficulty (e.g., easy words together...

We examined the effect of quiz type (graded, ungraded, and no quiz) on cumulative final exam performance across content-focused courses (Introductory Psychology [Intro] and Cognitive Psychology [Cog]), and a skills-focused course (Research Methods and Statistics [RMS]). We predicted that quizzing would produce a larger benefit for the content-focus...

Abstract To examine megastudy context effects, 585 critical words, each with a different orthographic rime, were placed at the beginning or end of a 2,614 word megastudy of reading aloud. Sixty participants (30 participants in each condition) responded to these words. Specific predictors examined for change between beginning and end conditions were...

Following the studies by Cortese, Khanna, and Hacker (2010) on recognition memory for monosyllabic words, recognition memory estimates (e.g., hits, false alarms, hits minus false alarms) for 3000 disyllabic words were obtained from 120 subjects and 2897 of these words were analysed via multiple regression. Participants studied 30 lists of 50 words...

Reading involves a process of matching an orthographic input with stored representations in lexical memory. The masked priming paradigm has become a standard tool for investigating this process. Use of existing results from this paradigm can be limited by the precision of the data and the need for cross-experiment comparisons that lack normal exper...

Speeded naming and lexical decision data for 1,661 target words following related and unrelated primes were collected from 768 subjects across four different universities. These behavioral measures have been integrated with demographic information for each subject and descriptive characteristics for every item. Subjects also completed portions of t...

Imageability and age of acquisition (AoA) effects, as well as key interactions between these variables and frequency and consistency, were examined via multiple regression analyses for 1,936 disyllabic words, using reaction time and accuracy measures from the English Lexicon Project. Both imageability and AoA accounted for unique variance in lexica...

Age of acquisition (AoA) ratings based on a 1-7 scale for 3,000 disyllabic words were obtained from 32 participants. We demonstrate that these estimates are both reliable and valid. These estimates add to those collected on monosyllabic words and are of value to researchers interested in factors that contribute to word processing. They also can be...

We provide imageability estimates for 3,000 disyllabic words (as supplementary materials that may be downloaded with the article from www.springerlink.com ). Imageability is a widely studied lexical variable believed to influence semantic and memory processes (see, e.g., Paivio, 1971). In addition, imageability influences basic word recognition pro...

Megastudies with processing efficiency measures for thousands of words allow researchers to assess the quality of the word features they are using. In this article, we analyse reading aloud and lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates for 2,336 words to assess the influence of subjective frequency and age of acquisition on performance. Sp...

Age of acquisition (AoA) estimates are provided for 3,460 senses of 1,208 words (i.e., words with multiple meanings e.g., duck). The AoA rating estimates appear to be relatively consistent across participants. The Spearman-Brown split-half reliability coefficient is .95, while the correlations between each participant's ratings and the overall mean...

In two experiments we examined how children's nonword pronunciations are influenced by learning words. In Experiment 1, children pronounced nonwords before and after learning words sharing orthographic rimes with the nonwords. These rimes varied in spelling-to-sound consistency and regularity. Children's nonword pronunciations were more sensitive t...

In two studies, participants studied 30 lists of 50 words and were tested on 30 lists of 100 words. Item-level multiple regression analyses were conducted on hits, false alarms, hits minus false alarms, d', and C. The predictor variables were objective frequency, subjective frequency, imageability, orthographic similarity, phonological similarity,...

Using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) method for free recall, we examined mode of list presentation and association type in 8–9 year old children and adults. Participants verbally recalled lists of associates that were presented orally (Experiment 1) or visually (Experiment 2). Lists consisted of semantic associates (e.g. hound, puppy, etc.), ph...

Chronometric studies of language and memory processing typically emphasize changes in mean response time (RT) performance across conditions. However, changes in mean performance (or the lack thereof) may reflect distinct patterns at the level of underlying RT distributions. In seven experiments, RT distributional analyses were used to better unders...

Age of acquisition (AoA) ratings made on a 1-7 scale for 3,000 monosyllabic words were obtained from 32 participants across four blocks of 750 trials (two blocks of 750 trials were completed in each of 2 days). These results, as well as those of the regression analyses and reliability and validity measures that were originally reported in Cortese a...

Using the DRM paradigm, our experiments examined the activation and monitoring of memories in semantic and phonological networks. Participants viewed lists of words and/or pseudohomophones (e.g., dreem). In Experiment 1, participants verbally recalled lists of semantic associates or attempted to write them as they appeared during study. False recal...

The current study explores a set of variables that have the potential to predict semantic priming effects for 300 prime-target associates at the item level. Young and older adults performed either lexical decision (LDT) or naming tasks. A multiple regression procedure was used to predict priming based upon prime characteristics, target characterist...

The English Lexicon Project is a multiuniversity effort to provide a standardized behavioral and descriptive data set for 40,481 words and 40,481 nonwords. It is available via the Internet at elexicon.wustl.edu. Data from 816 participants across six universities were collected in a lexical decision task (approximately 3400 responses per participant...

Age of acquisition (AoA) ratings were obtained and were used in hierarchical regression analyses to predict naming and lexical-decision performance for 2,342 words (from Balota, Cortese, Sergent-Marshall, Spieler, & Yap, 2004). In the analyses, AoA was included in addition to the set of predictors used by Balota et al. (2004). AoA significantly pre...

This article evaluates 2 competing models that address the decision-making processes mediating word recognition and lexical decision performance: a hybrid 2-stage model of lexical decision performance and a random-walk model. In 2 experiments, nonword type and word frequency were manipulated across 2 contrasts (pseudohomophone-legal nonword and leg...

The present study examined whether prospective memory performance discriminates healthy aging from very mild dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and individuals at risk for DAT because of the presence of the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) epsilon4 allele. Four groups (young subjects, young-old control subjects, old-old control subjects, and subjects with...

Older adults, individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT), and individuals with semantic dementia (SD) produced the past tense of verbs based on present-tense carrier sentences (e.g., Everyday I ding the bell. Yesterday I_____the bell). Both regularity (i.e., whether or not -ed is used for the past tense) and consistency (i.e., the degr...

In three experiments,we examined the relationship between orthographic andphonological distinctiveness and incidental recall. In each experiment, participants were given a surprise free recalltest after they read words aloud as quickly and accurately as possible. The pattern of results replicated those reported in Cortese, Watson, Wang, and Fugett...

Individuals with semantic dementia (SD) were differentiated neuropsychologically from individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) at very mild-to-mild stages (clinical dementia rating 0.5 or 1). A picture naming and recognition memory experiment provided a particularly useful probe for early identification, with SD individuals showing pre...

Imageability ratings made on a 1-7 scale and reaction times for 3,000 monosyllabic words were obtained from 31 participants. Analyses comparing these ratings to 1,153 common words from Toglia and Battig (1978) indicate that these ratings are valid. Reliability was assessed (alpha = .95). The information obtained in this study adds to that of other...

Three experiments examined the role of three distinctive perceptual factors in recognition and recall memory. Using a subject-paced presentation rate, the first two experiments (recognition and recall) examined (1) the number of phonological-to-orthographic neighbors, (2) phonological-to-orthographic consistency, and (3) orthographic-to-phonologica...

Speeded visual word naming and lexical decision performance are reported for 2428 words for young adults and healthy older adults. Hierarchical regression techniques were used to investigate the unique predictive variance of phonological features in the onsets, lexical variables (e.g., measures of consistency, frequency, familiarity, neighborhood s...

Spelling performance across a common set of stimuli was examined in young adults, healthy older adults, individuals with early stage dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT), and four individuals with a primary semantic impairment (PSI). The stimuli included homophones and low-frequency sound-to-spelling consistent (i.e. words with more predictable s...

Two experiments address the nature of the word-frequency mirror effect in episodic recognition performance and the underlying cognitive changes that occur in both healthy aging and in early-stage Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT). In Experiment 1, five groups of participants (young, healthy old, healthy old-old, very mildly demented individual...

Subjective frequency estimates for large sample of monosyllabic English words were collected from 574 young adults (undergraduate students) and from a separate group of 1,590 adults of varying ages and educational backgrounds. Estimates from the latter group were collected via the internet. In addition, 90 healthy older adults provided estimates fo...

In a word-naming experiment, word-body consistency was crossed with grapheme-to-phoneme regularity to test predictions of current models of word recognition. In the latency and error data, a clear effect of consistency was observed, with the influence of regularity somewhat weaker. In addition, simulation data from three contemporary models of word...

Five groups of participants (young, healthy old, healthy old-old, very mild Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type, Mild Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type) studied and were tested on six 12-item lists of words selected from the DRM (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) materials. These lists of words strongly converged semantically on a nonpresented c...

Contrasting predictions of the dual-route and parallel distributed processing models of word recognition were tested in two experiments that investigated the relationship between position of irregularity and plosivity of initial phoneme. In a naming task (Experiment 1), words irregular at the first phoneme position yielded a larger phonological reg...

In two experiments, we examined the influence of semantic activation on the generation of a phonological code, testing the interactivity assumption common to both dual-route and interactive-activation models. In Experiment 1, subjects named regular and irregular targets preceded by related and unrelated primes. In Experiment 2, these variables and...

Thesis--(Ph. D.)--University of Kansas, Psychology, 1997. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-75).