The role of context on age-of-acquisition effects in reading.

The role of Age of Acquisition (AoA) as a psycholinguistic variable on visual word recognition and spelling tasks 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. For example an early acquired word, such as doll, will be named faster and more accurately than a late acquired word, such as dole. Several key questions have been raised with regards to understanding this phenomenon, specifically the locus of the AoA effects and its organisation within the lexical system. In a series of five single-word naming experiments, the locus of AoA effects are explored from a higher level of representation. Specifically the focus is on how context may influence the emergence of AoA during visual word recognition. Overall, results suggest that context has indeed a role on AoA which will be discussed within the current theoretical frameworks.