The role of context on age-of-acquisition effects in visual word recognition.

The influence of Age of Acquisition (AoA) on visual word recognition has been the topic of much recent research with evidence showing how early acquired items, such as words and pictures, are processed faster and more accurately in comparison to late acquired items. Several key questions have been raised with regards to understanding the age of
acquisition phenomenon, specifically the locus of the AoA effects and its organisation within the lexical system. Previously we reported (Raman, 2008) differential effects of context on AoA whereby its size varied as a function of word frequency. In the current study, the locus of AoA effects are further explored from a semantic level of representation in a series of single-word naming experiments.. Overall, results suggest that semantic context also impacts the size of AoA which will be discussed within the current theoretical frameworks.