The Influence of the Clustering Coefficient on Spoken Word Recognition

Abstract

The clustering coefficient refers to the proportion of phonological neighbors of a target word that are also neighbors of each other. The influence of the clustering coefficient on spoken word recognition was examined in the present study. In a same-different task, no significant effects of clustering coefficient were observed. In a perceptual identification task, words with a low clustering coefficient (i.e., few neighbors are interconnected) were more accurately identified than words with a high clustering coefficient (i.e., many neighbors are interconnected). In a lexical decision task, words with a low clustering coefficient were responded to more quickly than words with a high clustering coefficient. These findings suggest that the nature of relationships among the neighbors of the target word influences the lexical processing of the target word in the context of spoken word recognition.