Is lexical retrieval in speech production like recall or recognition? The effects of word frequency and neighbourhood size

We investigate the effects of word frequency and lexical neighbourhood density on word recall and recognition. We found a three-way interaction between memory task, the size of lexical neighbourhood of a target word, and target word frequency. In particular, performance on low frequency words with many lexical neighbours was surprisingly good in the recognition condition. The results show that the number of lexical neighbours of the target moderates the word frequency effect in recognition. Large neighbourhood size always has a facilitatory effect upon performance. The findings are contrasted with those observed in lexical access in speech production.