A psycholinguistic view to recognition of derived words in Persian mental lexicon and its application in term selection

One of the basic questions in the domain of lexical access and the process of word recognition in mental lexicon is how the native speaker can access the meaning of new complex words in his/her language and what factors affect its speed? The aim of this study was to investigate empirically effective factors on the speed of lexical access to the derived words in Persian mental lexicon. If we know these factors and consider them in term selection، this could increase the acceptance of new words in the Persian-speaking society. In this research we studied and compared the reaction time and error rate of some target and pseudo words. Our participants were a group of Persian-speaking highly educated people. The targets were classified according to the word frequency، base frequency and the family size of the root. The findings showed that word frequency significantly affects the reaction time and error rate، but not the root frequency and family size of the root. According to these findings، some solutions are suggested to improve the psychological level of acceptance in selection of terms.